WHZ View: Bowen tops unwanted PL stat that proves he has West Ham work to do
Jarrod Bowen has enjoyed a solid start to the season for West Ham but he will not be happy to lead the Premier League pack for substitutions off.
With four goals and two assists Bowen has established himself as an important part of the Hammers starting XI but he has work to do before he can call himself an integral cog in the Hammers machine.
Bowen has been an ever-present member of West Ham’s Premier League campaign this season, starting 16 of their 17 games and coming off the bench in the other.
However he has astonishingly only completed one full game as he has been substituted 15 times in the Premier League this season, three more than any other player (Tottenham Hotspur’s Tanguy Ndombele is second with 12).
The only match Bowen started and finished was the manic 3-3 draw at Spurs on October 18 where the Hammers fought back from 3-0 down to steal a point.
The question is, what is it that causes Moyes to sub Bowen with such regularity?
One simple reason might just be because Bowen’s position is where West Ham possess their most options.
According to WhoScored Bowen has made 13 of his appearances from the right hand side of the West Ham midfield/attack as he looks to cut in on his favoured left foot.
That exact turn of phrase could also be used for Andriy Yarmolenko who has appeared eight times as a substitute in the Premier League this season, and he has replaced Bowen in half of those, while his only start of the campaign saw him make way for Bowen in the second half of the 0-0 draw at Southampton on December 29.
Said Benrahma, Manuel Lanzini and Mark Noble are also players Moyes has used in front of the West Ham midfield.
The midfield pairing of Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek has proved crucial to any success West Ham have had this season and they join Aaron Cresswell as Premier League ever presents this season.
Therefore, if there are not any injuries to the back four and there is a solid midfield foundation that has proved itself to be so durable, who can Moyes really take off apart from his forward players?
Moyes has shifted between a five-man defence and a back four this season so when it has been the former there have only been three forwards on the pitch.
With the latter there have been four but one of those has tended to be Sebastien Haller who has been spearheading the attack in the absence of Michail Antonio.
Before Antonio recently came back from injury Haller was playing the full 90 minutes of matches as West Ham’s lack of striker options came back to haunt them.
With Haller now sold to Ajax Antonio remains the only senior striker at the club and so his place in the side looks secure when Moyes turns to his bench in the second half of games.
Naturally Bowen is one of the more obvious departures from the pitch alongside Pablo Fornals who also features high up the Premier League list (subbed off 10 times).
Maybe there is something else to it though.
Per fbref, Bowen has made 137 pressures in the Premier League this season which only ranks him in 127th position and not among the top Hammers performers for this metric.
Fbref regards pressures as “the number of times applying pressure to the opposing player who is receiving, carrying or releasing the ball.”
Indeed, even the supposedly cumbersome and now-departed Haller has made more (199).
So maybe it is his work rate and intensity that Bowen needs to improve in order to stay on the pitch.
Or maybe it is for on-the-ball reasons. Per WhoScored, Bowen only completes one dribble per game in the Premier League this season, less than Declan Rice (1.1).
Furthermore only two players (Antonio and Said Benrahma) are dispossessed more than Bowen (1.4), and both of those players have played less than half of the minutes accrued by Bowen.
His passing accuracy also ranks as one of the lowest in the West Ham team with a 74.3% accuracy.
When games are drawing to their completion perhaps Moyes wants more composure on the ball, especially in games that they are winning as they bid to keep the ball.
Or maybe he wants more intensity as the Hammers chase an equaliser late on.
Either way these are things for Bowen to consider as he looks to stop the sub rot and ensure he does not keep up this unwanted statistic.
In other West Ham news, see how our Super Fans reacted to the departure of club-record signing Sebastien Haller to Ajax.