Jarrod Bowen has scored five goals for West Ham in the Premier League this season. Photo: Getty Images/Rob Newell
As Harry Maguire and Calvin Phillips knows Gareth Southgate is as committed to his team as any England manager. But Southgate is no fool either. James Maddison and Nick Pope also know very well that a relevant person can always get into this squad.
After Saturday's 2-0 win over Sheffield United, West Ham manager David Moyes was unusually effusive about his star player Jarrod Bowen, who at 26 is approaching his prime. For all Moyes's admission that «I don't pick the England team», he at least came close to firmly suggesting that Southgate should be called. And here's why.
Goals
Saturday's opener against Sheffield United was typical of the club's best player of last season: efficient, understated, ruthless and supremely confident as he turned Vladimir Coufal's low cross over Wes Foderingham. And it was the fifth game out of seven in which he scored. What's more, he scores a variety of goals: there was a superb curler at Bournemouth, a poacher at Brighton, a ghostly Martin Peters-style header at Luton and an audacious tilted header at Anfield.
Team game
Despite his marksmanship this season, the teaching assistant's son has always been more than just a goalscorer, only cracking double figures once in the Premier League season. If Saturday's confrontation was less onerous than an offshore banking haven, Bowen showed his value as a member of the team. His relationship with Coufal developed on West Ham's right flank. The Czech full-back has a tendency to cover, has a good crossing hand, and is cultured enough to play a passing game like, of course, Kyle Walker and Kieran Trippier. But Bowen is more than just a striker.
Moyes' tactics of playing with a single striker almost drove them mad last season, when Bowen was the only West Ham player to appear in every Premier League game, not least because Gianluca Scamacca lacked the means to make it work. Michail Antonio's resurgence has also been a boon for Bowen. On Saturday, even as West Ham failed, the pair were kindred spirits. The crowd's groans as Antonio allowed a rare second-half chance to run away from him were only softened by the fact that Bowen's effort and laser vision created the chance.
Bowen's experience playing for England in the Nations League last year was disappointing. Photo: Fantasista/Getty Images/Chris Brunskill Unfinished Business
This should have been the perfect football feel-good story: the kid who got used to dressing up When Mohawk-era David Beckham was rejected by Aston Villa, he moved to non-league with Hereford United ' and then jumped to the Premier League when Hull City won the England cap. “This,” he said then, “is the icing on the cake.”
Alas, it was the darkest of fairy tales. Bowen's four England caps, all in the UEFA Nations League, came over 10 dizzying days in June last year after a rare injury ruled him out of action in March. He did not score — in fact, England scored only once in those matches — as he played only one full game, coming on twice as a substitute and coming on at half-time in a 4-0 rout against Hungary at Molineux. This was not the way it should have been. Redemption beckons.
Fiorentina
To man, all great players are players of the big game. With 15 seconds left in regulation time in last season's European Conference League final, Bowen latched on to Lucas Paqueta's superb pass, shrugged off Fiorentina's lumbering Brazilian defender Igor, kept his cool and fired past Pietro Terracciano to win the trophy for West Ham. . As Moyes admitted on Saturday, it was the moment Bowen proved he was a true big-game player. Southgate will be watching.
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