West Ham United manager David Moyes appears to have revealed a distrust of summer signing Nikola Vlasic.
Moyes refused to bring on the 24-year-old Croatian during West Ham’s tight 1-0 win over Watford last night, a game which could have certainly used a fresh spark from the bench.
While the sub he did make, Manuel Lanzini ultimately provided said spark, providing the assist for Jarrod Bowen’s winner thanks to an acute line breaking pass, it says a lot about what Moyes think of Vlasic that he hasn’t been given a chance to sign against a team near the bottom of the table.
Speaking in his post-match press conference to the club’s official website, Moyes expressed his desire to give Vlasic more minutes.
However, he also spoke about the tightness of some of The Hammers recent fixtures, noting that he didn’t feel Vlasic was right to come on during those games.
While he may have a point to an extent, sometimes taking a risk on a player with the quality Vlasic has can pull the game in his team’s favour.
And with West Ham suffering from fatigue due to an extremely thin squad, surely it would make some sense to allow Vlasic some more minutes to rotate the squad in games West Ham should be expected to win such as Watford.
Vlasic made the move from CSKA Moscow to West Ham in the summer for a reported £33m, he has thus far scored just once in 26 appearances.