Jarrod Bowen hailed West Ham United’s 2-0 Premier League victory at Arsenal as a ‘massive win’ for the Club.
The Irons won at Arsenal for the first time in nine attempts and the first time in manager David Moyes’ career, utilising a superb defensive performance and goals either side of half-time from Tomáš Souček and Dinos Mavropanos to shoot down Mikel Arteta’s Gunners.
Bowen played his part in both goals, keeping the ball in to cross for Souček to convert on 13 minutes before being involved in a counter that led to the James Ward-Prowse corner which Mavropanos headed in accurately ten minutes after half-time.
The result saw West Ham make it 32 competitive wins in 2023 – the second-highest tally in the Club’s history behind the Second Division title-winning year of 1981 – and reach the halfway stage of the Premier League season with a record-high 33 points.
Now, Bowen is demanding he and his teammates maintain that consistency into 2024 and qualify for Europe for the fourth consecutive season.
“It’s a massive win!” he enthused. “We knew it was going to be difficult as these are top side, but we managed to build on what we did against Manchester United.
“I think, for us, we haven’t been consistent enough. We might have won one game and then the Fulham game springs to mind when we conceded five, and if we want to be spoken about to go to the top six and finishing higher in the division then we need to be consistent.
“Like I say, today was a hard game, but I said after the Man United game that we needed to come here with a mindset to take points and we’ve done that.”
Bowen’s assist for Souček was confirmed after a lengthy VAR check for whether the ball crossed the byline, but official Craig Pawson decided it had stayed in and confirmed that referee Michael Oliver could award the goal.
“Listen, when it happened in a split-second I knew the ball was in midair so it’s probably hard to tell at the time,” the player himself recalled. “Obviously you don’t want it to go out, so you try to keep it in play quickly and, like I said, it’s difficult and I haven’t seen it, but I was there at the time and it’s one of those where because the ball was in the air it was hard to tell. If it had been on the ground it would probably have been easier to tell.
“All I could do was try and get it across to Tom or Mo [Kudus] and the goal was scored and it stood, so it was really, really important to get that first goal.”
Having ended 2023 in style with ten wins in 14 games in all competitions, including victories over Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and Arsenal (twice), Bowen now knows the standards have been set and need to be maintained.
“It’s those consistency levels,” he concluded. “We’ve won tonight and we play Brighton in a few days [at home on Tuesday 2 January] and we have to go there and win that as well.
“We need to take one game at a time. I know it sounds boring but that’s the best way for us, and that’s all we’ve got to do, concentrate on ourselves, don’t think about anyone else, and keep getting results.”
