West Ham: Sky Sports pundit wowed by ‘brilliant’ Jarrod Bowen moment v Freiburg
Dean Ashton was left wowed by a “brilliant” Jarrod Bowen moment in the first half of West Ham versus Freiburg and hailed the “magnificent” Michail Antonio live on Sky Sports.
The Hammers were already leading on the night in the Europa League last-16 second-leg tie at the London Stadium on Thursday through Lucas Paqueta’s ninth-minute opener and it was England forward Bowen who doubled the lead to put them ahead on aggregate.
Former Hammers striker Ashton was covering the game for Sky Sports News (14 March) and waxed lyrical over Bowen and Antonio.
“It’s Jarrod Bowen with a brilliant, brilliant strike and Micky Antonio when he’s in this sort of form, he looks fit now, he’s just so difficult to handle for centre-backs,” he said.
“It’s a long ball to the opposite side, Soucek knocks it down, Antonio just drags the defenders with him, let’s it go through his legs to Bowen.
“What’s so good about Jarrod Bowen, he can either do the one that he curls or he can cut it low which is exactly what he does, strikes it low, skips it off the surface, absolutely no chance for the goalkeeper.”
He later added: “Antonio started the game and has been magnificent, can’t be handled by their two centre-backs and it’s just opened up space for Paqueta, Bowen and Kudus.”
The Hammers went on to thrash Freiburg 5-0 on the night to progress 5-1 on aggregate.
Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio impress for West Ham
There was a fair bit of pressure mounting on manager David Moyes once again before this game after defeat in the first leg last week was followed by a 2-2 draw with Burnley, a game in which they had to fight back from 2-0 down.
But this was an excellent performance from the Hammers, who were at it right from the first whistle at a noisy London Stadium, with fans dashing for kick-off despite the 5:45pm start time.
Bowen has been a stand-out performer for West Ham this season so it was no surprise to see him impressing. But it has been an injury-hit campaign for Antonio, whose future beyond this season is still not particularly clear.
When he is in the mood, though, Ashton is absolutely spot on that he is an absolute handful for opposition defenders due to his strength and power and he was a crucial part of Bowen getting his goal here.
In other West Ham news, Dharmesh Sheth has issued a “bizarre” David Moyes update.
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