LONDON — David Moyes talked up Jarrod Bowen‘s chances of being included in Gareth Southgate’s next England squad after he scored a hat trick in West Ham’s 4-2 win over Brentford at the London Stadium on Monday.
Bowen put West Ham 2-0 up after just seven minutes with two clinical finishes from inside the penalty area before completing the first hat trick of his career shortly after the hour mark with a close-range header.
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“I’m really pleased for Jarrod,” Moyes told a news conference. “I think his performances recently have gone a wee bit unnoticed because we’ve not played that well. Jarrod’s actually been taking the fight to them in all the games and it’s not really fallen for him and it’s not quite happened. Tonight it did.
“The goals will obviously be the notable thing, but his all around play, the way he’s working. I mean, I thought he had three or four other runs in the game where he was a threat all night.
“Generally, I think the goals will hopefully get him back in Gareth’s thinking, but I’m not saying he’s out of Gareth’s thinking because I think the last squad he was probably in and around it. But if you can play wide and you can play centre-forward and you’re a goal scorer, I think you’ll always be interesting to the national manager.”
The win relieved some of the pressure on Moyes after his team had failed to win any of their previous eight matches in all competitions.
West Ham also hadn’t scored in any of their last three games, with their last fixture a 6-0 home defeat to Arsenal that saw thousands of home fans leave the stadium at half-time.
Asked whether he feels as if the recent scrutiny he has been under has been harsh, Moyes said: “Look, I try to say I think if you look through teams in the Premier League have had difficult periods, difficult months.
“I can think of Man City before they went to the World Championship [Club World Cup], Liverpool had periods as well, Man United have had a period. So, I mean West Ham are certainly going to be no different. If anything, we are going to be more likely. We are still trying to grow into it and become more consistent and more reliable.
“The people who watch West Ham more often would recognise that probably without [Mohammed] Kudus, probably without [Lucas] Paqueta, [Nayef] Aguerd, we were without Edson Álvarez for a few games as well at different times.
“We’ve struggled to get probably our best team out or get a team out which is going get us good enough results. But overall, if we can get our better players out, then we feel as if we can compete with most teams.”
One of Moyes’ assistant coaches, Kevin Nolan — the former West Ham, Bolton and Newcastle midfielder — appeared to become involved in a heated exchange of words with Brentford forward Neal Maupay during the half-time interval.
The two men were separated by Brentford defender Mathias Jørgensen and stadium staff as the teams emerged from the tunnel ahead of the start of the second half.
Maupay has also been involved in separate altercations with James Maddison and Kyle Walker this season, but Moyes said he “genuinely didn’t see” the incident.
West Ham’s victory moved them up to eighth in the table, while Brentford remain in 16th after they were leapfrogged by Everton earlier on Monday when the Merseyside club had their 10-point reduction reduced to six by the Premier League.