West Ham United forward Marko Arnautovic has been likened to Zlatan Ibrahimovic for his influence on teammates, by manager David Moyes.
Arnautovic has been in good form of late too, scoring nine goals and making four in his past 14 games, including setting up Javier Hernandez’s equaliser in their 1-1 draw with Chelsea last weekend.
“He is a little bit of a Zlatan inasmuch as the players look to him,” Moyes said, as reported by Goal.
“His performances have done it in many ways.”
There had originally been doubts of whether Arnautovic could be a success at West Ham given his start and apparent lack of desire to track back. But Moyes feels he has got the best out of the Austrian in a new system. NaijaBet.com
“I was concerned, because I’d seen him play for Stoke sometimes and I didn’t think he did all the running back defensively,” he added.
“I was saying ‘I’m coming to a team in the bottom three and if I’m not going to get all the players running, we’re going to be in difficulty.’
“We had to find a way of getting Marko into a different system. And we played around with it, it wasn’t rocket science.
“We didn’t go out there with it really planned. He was the one that showed us, and going to centre-forward freed him up a little bit. I got him to run and close things down, and show that he really had that capability.
“He’s someone who needs the confidence, but I think he also needs the understanding of how you get to the levels you’ve got to.”
West Ham’s Zlatan?
The Austrian has also contributed to a further four with assists from 23 chances created, and a 68% completion rate in take-ons.
