Yarmo Too Slow & Too Lazy-Moyes Thinks So!

Just five minutes before Jesse Lingard scored what proved to be the winning goal at the London Bowl, Hammers manager David Moyes was seen to be going apoplectic in his assessment of how Andriy Yarmolenko had been performing having come on to replace Nikola Vlasic in the 62nd minute, the Iron's manager could be seen screaming at the front man.

Talented he may be and a prolific scorer at International level for the Ukraine, but Yarmolenko's work rate is nowhere near the required level for the Barclays Premier League, you could see the veins in Moyes' temples from a hundred yards, thank goodness Stuart 'Psycho' Pearce was up top doing his aerial observations of the game, a ploy first deployed when David Moyes was self isolating having caught Covid, it worked so well it has become part of Hammers match day practise, both home and away.

Psycho would have blown a gasket watching Yarmo lumber up and down the pitch, how can a professional on £115,000 per week not run or try to harry an opponent on the pitch, especially when they only have to do it for half an hour? Michail Antonio runs more in 3 minutes than Yarmo does in 30! No one expects the player to emulate Antonio, but he could at least try, on numerous occasions he just watched as the ball passed him by, barely moving a muscle to try and intervene.

This is simply NOT good enough, Moyes would be better off bringing on a youngster like Okoflex for the closing period of a game, what he lacks in experience he would more than make up for with effort. This is exactly what the team DOES need as they attempt to either close out a game or retrieve it from a losing position.

There is NO point in playing Yarmolenko just because he is being paid a king's ransom every week, that was a past error that Moyes had nothing to do with, he can however stop perpetuating the mistake by simply not selecting a player who is far more interested in playing for their country than for their club, Real Madrid fans will tell you all about Gareth Bail's attitude!

Next season such talk will be academic, as Yarmo's ludicrous contract will have finally come to an end, one thing that is certain, there won't be ANY club on the planet willing to pay even HALF of his current wages! Hopefully the lesson will be learned with regards to signing expensive injury prone players and giving them massive contracts on insane wages.

You may quite reasonably ask why on earth the club sanctioned such a deal, along with all the other 'tragic' signings of the Pellegrini era, with the exception of Diop, Fornals and Fabianski. The answer using a motoring trade analogy is, players like Yarmolenko are similar to expensive luxury cars that come on the market towards the end of their official shelf life. They have usually not received the manufacturers servicing that was specified and as such will become increasingly expensive to maintain to the point that eventually they become financially inviable, leaving the owner with an expensive Turkey that no one else wants!

Moyes is well known for encouraging youth players, surely now really is the time for him to bring one or two through? They would be raw, but they couldn't have done any worse than Yarmolenko who's lack of discernable effort sends a clear signal to the opposition that become endemic, especially for fans looking on, indeed there are some who even left the Stadium on seeing him enter the fray!

It's not Yarmo's fault he was handed such a crazily generous contract, and it isn't as if the club doesn't have a history of handing out such contracts, Carroll, Reid and Wilshere were all handed insane deals that came back to bite the club hard, if it doesn't learn from the past then there is no way forward until the lessons are learned.

Some might think we have an 'agenda' regarding Yarmolenko and they would be correct, however we also had an agenda with Carroll, Wilshere and more latterly have one with Winston Reid. To try and put things in perspective, Willian realised he wasn't cutting the mustard at Arsenal following his lucrative move from Chelsea, his resolution? To take a massive cut in wages to go and play football and NOT steal a living, just a thought!- Ed