Marouane Soucek: Moyes remakes Fellaini, now destroys Czech captain in the same way

West Ham are drowning in a crisis, without a win for eight games and coach David Moyes is trying changes to the line-up that he might not normally have thought of. But that is not true of shifting Tomas Soucek into the role of false striker. He has pulled another player to glory in a similar move in the past.

Atyp and a player who will not play in a similar position again. That’s what the media and pundits in England called Marouane Fellaini when he was jumping into the offensive midfielder position. The 6’2″ footballer stood under the spike and waited for centres in the role of a false striker.

The author of the idea to turn a defensive midfielder into a hammer in the whitewash was none other than David Moyes. And it wasn’t just in the final minutes when his team was losing. In the 2012/13 season, Fellaini played 29 games as a sub with an impressive 12+8 record.

Fellaini has played 74 games at club level in his career as a sub, and on 50 of those occasions Moyes has sent him to that position. Once for Manchester United and in the other 49 games he was still in the role of Everton manager.

Soucek needs Antonio

Tomas Soucek has been compared to Fellaini during his first few months in England. Mainly because of his seemingly clumsy movement and also his strength in the air. But the productivity was also related to the fact that his teammates in attack made space for him to finish with movement.

Simply Soucek had so much space in the whitewash because the stoppers had to attend to the strong Mikhail Antoine or Sebastian Haller in the air. The latter is already at Dortmund, Antonio has been plagued by injury and Moyes doesn’t have another playmaker.

In the absence of classic strikers, Soucek has been complementing Jarrod Bowen or Mohammed Kudus in the whitewash, who are not good headers. The stoppers were able to concentrate on Soucek and that’s why the Czech captain hasn’t scored since the start of the year.

And with Soucek losing his big weapon in the form of second-wave rushes, putting him on the sub makes no sense. In terms of passing success, he is one of the worst in that position. His strength is in defending and organising play from deep.

Source: Premier League, West Ham United