West Ham United boss David Moyes admits he can see goalscoring winger Jarrod Bowen potentially becoming more of a central striker later in his career.
Bowen has had an excellent scoring record in recent years with both the Hammers and former club Hull City, scoring 86 club goals in 240 appearances in all competitions since the start of the 2017/18 season.
His fifth goal of this season and third of the international break came on Thursday night, during a 2-1 win over Belgian side Anderlecht, his 32 nd goal for the Irons and a strike that saw him become the club’s joint-top scorer of all-time in European matches alongside Johnny Byrne and David Cross.
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His record is very impressive, especially considering he is almost always played off the right wing, although he has made occasional appearances as a central striker across the past five seasons.
Given that record, including being West Ham’s top scorer and 18 goals in all competitions last season, Moyes believes that the 25-year-old could later become a striker or a more central forward further down the line in his career.
Speaking on Bowen, Moyes now sees a quicker, more technically gifted and more tactically astute player and can see him emulating multi-time Ballon d’Or winners Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, who both started as wingers before playing as a central strikers later in their careers.
“I think Jarrod has started to show in his development, you can see an improvement in him,” said Moyes. “His technical part of the game looks better. He’s faster and quicker than he’s been and he’s understanding a lot more tactically, what his roles have to do.
“I see Jarrod, if you think of the best wingers, it might not be the right terminology, I think of all of the best wingers over the years, you have your Ronaldo's and Messi's nearly all of them became centre-forwards and goalscorers and I think Jarrod is going towards that and his career is going on, getting more towards being a forward player who wants to score goals.
“If you look at his goals last year and to be fair, if you look at his goals every year, his goals at [Hull] over two/three years, he has a really good goalscoring record over the years and for us, he’s been really consistent as well.”
Moyes signed Bowen from Championship side Hull just over a month after returning to the London Stadium for his second stint as the Irons’ manager, with Bowen arriving off a run of 16 goals in 29 Championship appearances in the first half of the 2019/20 season.
Since then, Bowen has continued to grow as a player, winning his first call-up to the England squad and playing in all four of their UEFA Nations League matches in June, as he hopes to earn a place in Gareth Southgate’s World Cup squad next month.
However, off the back of that June training camp with his country, Bowen started the season slowly, failing to score on get an assist in any of his first seven Premier League games of the campaign.
Bowen has only rediscovered his best form since coming back from England duty last month where he did not feature in either of their Nations League clashes with Italy and Germany.
Moyes has spoken on that start and felt that prior to his 18-goal 2021/22 campaign, Bowen came back from pre-season fit after running in potato fields in his hometown of Hereford compared to this year, where his summer break involved a camp with England.
“I think there is,” said Moyes when asked if lessons were to be learned about how Bowen’s start of the season will have to be looked at since becoming an international. “The year before, we’d had quite a short break, Jarrod had said he had gone home, back to Hereford to be with his family.
“I said ‘what were you doing?’ He said ‘I just went running, I was running in the potato fields and all over Hereford’ and he came back in incredible condition and went on. He started the season great, actually in the end, probably his form from January onwards, we needed his goals. I actually think he got himself in such a good physical condition, he was ready to start.
“I think the difference was probably the length of the season, away with the international break then saying he needed a break, which he did do. I think it’s just taking him time to get up and running again. I just think of the season before after England England were in the final of the European Championships, Harry Kane had a slow start to the season but that went on to be fantastic in the second half of the season.
“It was probably because of fatigue, the games, not enough recovery. I’m hoping it is a little bit of the sign, but I’m beginning to see a lot of good signs from Jarrod now.
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