“I don’t know if I have got that.”
David Moyes has a plan to stop Eden Hazard, but doesn’t feel he has a player capable of executing the plan.
West Ham United play Chelsea in the early kick-off on Saturday at the London Stadium, and face one of the Premier League’s most in-form players. Hazard has been brilliant recently. The Belgian has scored eight goals in his last 11 games and is showing the type of form that won him the Player of the Year award in 2015.
Moyes would like to try man-mark him on Saturday, but doesn’t feel any of his players are up to the task.
“There are occasions when I would consider man-marking,” Moyes told reporters on Friday.
“Hazard is a player who would definitely come into that category. The problem is that I don’t know if I have got someone who is that type of player to be a man-marker. I’ve done it in the past with other players, like David Silva at Manchester City — at Everton, I might have put Jack Rodwell on him. You’ve heard the saying ‘if he goes to the toilet, follow him’. I don’t know if I have got that. It needs to be people who are athletic and quick. You say to them, ‘don’t you think about doing anything else, this is your job’, because he is that important.”
Jose Mourinho instructed Ander Herrera to man-mark Hazard when Manchester United played Chelsea at Old Trafford last April, and it worked to great effect as the home side recorded a 2-0 victory.
However, once again, the West Ham manager reminded everyone, including his own squad, that he doesn’t feel he has anyone at his disposal capable of doing such a job against Chelsea.
“Looking through the squad we have got at the moment, I couldn’t really identify anyone who could do that, but tactically it would not be a bad idea to stop him,” Moyes said.
The former Everton manager is often an easy target for criticism, but he also leaves himself open to criticism with such comments, and this has all the ingredients of a classic Moyes quote.
- He focuses on what he doesn’t have.
- He talks down the qualities of his squad in public, which he did on a weekly basis as Sunderland manager.
- He says things would be different if only he had better resources at his disposal. Like, for example, when he spoke about almost signing Cesc Fabregas, Toni Kroos and Gareth Bale for United.
- He suggests that things were better at Everton, and laments that he doesn’t have the same type of players available to him now. Like when he made Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand watch videos of Phil Jagielka defending.
Moyes is probably right, maybe West Ham don’t have an “athletic and quick” player to neutralise the threat of Hazard. But he isn’t doing himself any favours by stating it in public and potentially getting on the wrong side of his players.
