So Michail Antonio is unhappy with David Moyes and wants to leave West Ham according to reports. Quite frankly this surprises me somewhat, because Antonio has never had it so good with any other manager.
In many respects David Moyes is the perfect manager for Antonio. I was most surprised to hear the striker criticise the very tactics in which he’s thrived during a recent podcast.
It wasn’t just Moyes who would have felt irked by Antonios’s comments but we’ll get to that later. The insinuation was that Moyes tactics meant a striker had to feed off scraps and Gianluca Scamacca wasn’t up to it. I paraphrase for the purposes of the blog but that’s the general gist.
For the record I don’t disagree with him, but the timing was poor and arrived just before our cup final in Prague. It also coincided with leaked reports that Antonio wanted to leave at the end of the season. This certainly matches the whispers that I’ve been hearing all season.
On the Hammers grapevine it’s an open secret that the Jamaican international doesn’t rate Moyes or his tactics.
He never had it this good under Pellegrini
I found the alleged complaint by Antonio confusing and contradictory to say the least. Almost no other player has benefitted under David Moyes to the extent that Michail Antonio has. He may not like the tactics but he’s ideally suited to them.
I’m no sycophant for David Moyes but surely he deserves credit for resurrecting Antonio’s career? When he arrived to manage West Ham for a second time Mikey was a substitute (albeit a good one).
Manuel Pellegrini preferred Sabastien Haller as a striker whilst Felipe Anderson, Snodgrass, Fornals & Yarmolenko took turns on the wing. Moyes’s arrival at West Ham reinvigorated Michail Antonio’s career just like it had with Marko Arnautovic first time around.
I can think of plenty of players who might have reason to feel let down by Moyes, but Antonio isn’t one of them. He’s been a super-sub, winger and a right back since his move from Nottingham Forest, but it was Moyes who turned him a striker. Moyes who had faith in his ability to lead the line almost singlehandedly for 18 months.
Without Moyes there is no way that Antonio would be the club’s record Premier League goal scorer.
Maybe memories are short in football but Moyes has been good for the player. Perhaps he needs the luxury of time to fully appreciate it.