Jarrod Bowen boosts miracle hopes but West Ham's epic European era in danger of ending
No football supporter would admit that their team ever does things the easy way. A trip through the wringer is a ritual of sadistic fulfilment, plain sailing the luxury preserve of some other elite and — to burgle a fitness influencer’s cliched mantra — the journey all the more worthwhile for the bumps along the way.
It is why, even as Bayer Leverkusen arrive at London Stadium on Thursday, 2-0 up and on the back of 43 matches without flaw, Sunday’s Bundesliga title win still comes with a narrative of triumph against adversity — of the ‘Neverkusen’ ghosts put to rest, of a team addicted to comebacks and late goals, of the Bayern Munich behemoth dethroned.
David Moyes, though, insisted on Wednesday that West Ham’s infatuation with the undulating road is something more, something inherent in this club that means even with a simpler draw and a fairer wind, tonight’s Europa League quarter-final second leg would inevitably still be in the balance, at best.
“Maybe West Ham are a different sort of club,” the Scot said. “This place has never been smooth at any time, I don’t think. The people who watch West Ham and come here probably know that’s part of it.
“I don’t think anyone comes here to have a smooth time. It’s always got a tinge of something else about it.”
It is part of the reason why the Moyes era at large has been so difficult to define, littered with historic success and a fair sprinkling of struggle, the two at times mere weeks apart. Many of its most memorable results are not four- and five-nil strolls, but turnarounds of the type — if not magnitude — that will be needed on Thursday.
Intriguingly, during Wednesday’s media rounds it was the lockdown epic against Tottenham afforded most air-time, when the Hammers came from 3-0 down with eight minutes to play to draw, courtesy of Manuel Lanzini’s stunner.
“There were games like that that showed we can come back,” said goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski. “I don’t think a team has been 3-0 down before [in the Premier League], then scored three goals in the last 10 minutes.”
There was hope and warning in equal measure in the example, Fabianski pointing out that while a hell-for-leather start and an early goal might appear his side’s swiftest route to salvation, they are ‘only’ two-down in the tie.
“The game-plan has to be smart,” he added. “You cannot go too crazy from the start. In the last game they scored two in the last minutes, so it’s possible. We have to stay in the game and take our opportunities.”
Arriving at Rush Green on Wednesday morning, it would be a stretch to say the place could be found buzzing with optimism, but Jarrod Bowen’s unexpected emergence onto the training pitch delivered a tangible lift.
The forward has not featured since limping off at Wolves at the start of the month, but given the stakes and Moyes’s paucity of options out wide it would now be a surprise were he not to start.
Fail — and that seems a harsh word given the task — to pull off the miracle, and after a period in which the club’s perpetual rocky road has been infused with a continental twist, this might just prove an ending of sorts; West Ham are flagging in their domestic push for Europe, just as English football’s sliding coefficient is raising the bar.
“It’s a club that has been relegated, it has been up and down,” Moyes added. “But it’s never been in Europe three times in a row, I know that. Our plan is to try and make it four.”
