West Ham United manager David Moyes has revealed that midfield duo Pablo Fornals and Manuel Lanzini both chose to play against FCSB, despite having the choice to stay in England.
For the Hammers’ 3-0 win on FCSB on Thursday night, just ten senior players travelled to Romania for the game. Spaniard Fornals scored in both halves, either side of a Joyskim Dawa own goal to ensure West Ham became the first side ever to win all six group games in a Europa Conference League campaign.
With less than a full side of senior players travelling, there were full debuts for 16-year-old left-back Ollie Scarles and 18-year-old striker Divin Mubama, with fellow youngsters Kaelan Casey and Kamarai Swyer both coming off the bench to make their senior debuts.
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For Fornals, it was only the second time he had ever scored twice in the same game for the Hammers, with the other coming on the final day of the 2020/21 season against Southampton, taking the Spaniard’s tally for the season to three in all competitions this term.
After the win, Moyes hoped that Fornals’ brace will inspire more goals to come from the former Villarreal man, while also saying that he and fellow midfielder Lanzini both had the chance to be rested for the game, but they opted to travel to Romania.
“I hope so, Moyes told football.london when asked if he hopes Fornals can start scoring more often. “Pablo [Fornals] needed that, a little bit of confidence.I gave him the chance to stay back, I said ‘look, you don’t need to come out, we’ve got enough players.’ He said ‘no, I want to play.’ It was good and so did [Manuel] Lanzini.
“We gave the senior players the opportunity to stay, they all wanted minutes, they all wanted to play and I’ve got to say, they played well, they played really well tonight and it’ll help Pablo with getting two goals.”
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