West Ham United manager David Moyes has explained why he substituted striker Gianluca Scamacca early in the second half during the 4-0 Europa Conference League round of 16 second leg win over AEK Larnaca.
Scamacca made his first start in over two months at the London Stadium and opened the scoring on 20 minutes when getting a toed finish to the end of a solo run, putting West Ham 1-0 up on the night and three goals clear on aggregate.
Following a quick-fire brace from Jarrod Bowen, Moyes made a triple substitution on 54 minutes, taking Bowen, Lucas Paqueta and Scamacca all off, amid recent comments surrounding his low levels of “physical data.”
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Speaking about the decision, Moyes said the initial plan was to play him for an hour, but when taking off Bowen and Paqueta at 3-0, thought it was best to take off Scamacca at the same time to give himself to other opportunities to pause the game and make substitutes, should he wish to.
“I was going to play him for 60 minutes, I told him I was going to play him for 60 minutes,” said Moyes. “The only reason I did it sooner was because we were going to make the substitutions and get rid of Jarrod (Bowen) and Lucas (Paqueta).
“We thought in case we needed more room, in case we needed positions to do it, we thought we were just going to do it in one instead of five minutes time or ten minutes time. He got 55 minutes or so, so a good start for him.”
Speaking on Scamacca’s performance, Moyes felt that there were positives to take from the Italian, other than his goal.
The Scot hopes that a run out of over 45 minutes and the Italian bagging his ninth goal of the season will help him to re-discover his best form.
“He did okay, was a wee bit fortunate with the goal but strikers need their goals to gain confidence,” added Moyes. “I’m pleased for him, he’s a really good lad and done a lot of good things tonight so hopefully, it will help bring him on.”
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