It is three years since Jarrod Bowen joined a West Ham United battling to stay in the Premier League – a battle the Irons ultimately won with a game to spare.
Since then, the forward has directly contributed to more goals than any other Hammer, made his senior England debut, helped the Club finish sixth and seventh in the top-flight and reach the semi-finals of the UEFA Europa League.
Back in January 2020, Bowen was just 23, had played just 179 minutes of Premier League football and, despite having scored over 50 goals in the EFL Championship, was an unproven player at the highest level. After scoring 35 goals and assisting 24 more in 133 appearances in Claret and Blue, he has proved himself beyond any doubt.
While Bowen’s career has been on an upward trajectory over the past decade, when he shrugged off the disappointment of unsuccessful trials to make his name at Hull, earn a move to West Ham and become an England international, he has still had challenges to overcome.
The COVID pandemic hit just weeks after Bowen had completed his transfer to West Ham and moved to east London, and lockdown left him isolated from friends and family members. Thankfully, the togetherness in David Moyes’ squad meant the youngster got the support he needed to settle into his new Club.
In March last year, Bowen suffered an Achilles injury that ruled him out of the Europa League round of 16 tie with Sevilla. Again, his teammates came to his aid, seeing off the Spanish side to reach the quarter-finals, where the No20 scored in both legs to lead the Hammers to an unforgettable aggregate win over French opponents Olympique Lyonnais.
Bowen’s return of 18 goals and 13 assists saw him called-up and then selected by Gareth Southgate for England’s four UEFA Nations League ties last June. The 26-year-old kept his place in the squad in September, but then suffered the disappointment of missing out on going to the FIFA World Cup finals.
The forward admitted that the prospect of going to Qatar and the setback of being left out affected his form before Christmas but now, with that experience under his belt and the support of his family – both his father Sam and brother Harry and partner Dani Dyer and her father Danny – and friends, Bowen is playing with freedom and showing real signs of getting back to the outstanding form that he showed last season.
On Saturday, he will take aim at opponents that he has enjoyed memorable battles with in recent seasons in Chelsea.
In July 2020, he registered two assists in a vital 3-2 win, then scored one and made another when West Ham saw off the Blues by the same scoreline at London Stadium in December 2021. Earlier this season, he was incorrectly penalised for a foul on Chelsea goalkeeper Édouard Mendy, ruling out Maxwel Cornet’s late equaliser at Stamford Bridge.
And so, three years after joining, Bowen has huge incentive and huge desire to overcome his latest challenge and again win the battle to keep West Ham in the Premier League.
I remember speaking after the Arsenal game on Boxing Day and I said then that, as players, we got ourselves in this position and, as much as you do not believe it, you have to believe it and cannot hide away from it because it's the situation that we're in.
After the two years that we've had, I think this year was always going to be the hardest in terms of being consistent because we had that one year where we finished sixth, then last year was a bit of a free hit because nobody expected us to do it again.
We played freely and ended up finishing in the European positions again, but then I think this season has been different in the way people have been looking at us and putting pressure on us not just to finish in mid-table, but to finish in the top six every year.
We didn’t start as well as we wanted to get back in that position, and we still haven’t, but it’s about us as players to stick together and really fight for this Club like we’ve always done.
The start of this year, we’ve had a couple of FA Cup wins and they’ve obviously helped with confidence, which is a massive thing when we’re in the position that we’re in.
When we were in the top six, we were coming in every day with confidence and momentum behind us, but at this time winning the Derby game was one we wanted to win and took confidence from into the Newcastle game, which is probably one of the toughest games we could have had up at St James’ Park with the way they are flying.
I thought we did really well there and could have come away with three points on another day, so it’s looking up and that’s all we can do.
I spoke recently about my disappointment of missing out on the England squad for the World Cup and it was a massive, but it’s something I have learned from.
As much as we’re professionals and we’re meant to be just football, football, football, and it’s a given that we turn up every week and play our hearts out, sometimes when you want something to happen and it’s so close, it can affect you more than you actually realise.
Of course, I was trying to put it to the back of my mind and just play my game, but I think there were some aspects where I was probably trying to do a bit too much and that was affecting my performances for the Club, which was the most disappointing thing.
Since we’ve been back, I think I’ve been back to myself and playing at a level where I’m happy and I’ve scored a few goals as well.
For me, it was about getting back to that level I was at in the second half of last season, when I went on an unbelievable run. I don’t think I was a million miles away from it, but I wasn’t quite there.
I’ve had a fresher mind and I’m dealing with it differently now and if I score and create more goals and play well, there will be talk of me going back to the international setup again.
Now, I’m ready to deal with it, rather than trying to do too much and it affecting me and me not playing well. It was all new to me and I’m not making excuses because I’m always hard on myself, but I think I’d look at it in a different way now and not let it get in the way of my football.
It was a massive opportunity for me and I’ve no regrets of how I did things or dealt with it, because it was down to me at the end of the day.
It’s only just gone the anniversary of me being here three years, and if you said to me I’d be fighting for a place in the World Cup squad, I’d have said I was a million miles away, and I’ve got four caps that nobody can take those away from me.
It’s made me hungrier, and I feel I’m getting back to the level where I want to be at.
Me and my Dad speak every single day and he and my family are always supportive. I remember, we were speaking about whether I would make it or not and my Dad and my brother drove down on the day the squad was named, just to be there for me, so I know I’ve got good support behind me from my family and my friends.
They were so happy to see me play for England and I don’t think I was a million miles away, so hopefully there will be more opportunities for me in the future.
Dani and her Dad are probably more in the public eye and they have more stories written about them than me, and it is helpful to be able to talk to them about how to handle things.
We’re in the public eye because we’re football players and nobody is going to take a picture of me if I go to the shop, because people don’t care – if they did, I’d probably put my thumbs up and smile! – but they will of Dani and her Dad because people want to see them.
If they print a photo of Dani at the supermarket then they might sell more papers, so it’s definitely different for them and Dani and her Dad know how to deal with all that press attention.
I’ve never been one to get caught up in social media and what people are writing because, as I’ve said before, you can go on there to look at one thing and end up spending an hour looking at what people are saying about you, and that can play on your mind and affect the way you perform.
I want to interact with the fans and that’s great when things are going well, but when things haven’t been going great, like they have this season, of course the fans are going to get annoyed. I’d be more worried if they weren’t annoyed after where we’ve been and where we could go, because there is so much potential for this Club to go on and on.
That’s one of the key things that made me sign here in the first place and look at what we did over the last two seasons. Of course, this season hasn’t been our best, but I think there is still a lot more to come and we’ve kicked on at the start of this year.
We want to get in a flow and get ourselves out of the conversation of being around the bottom. If you are nine points away from it, you’re not checking over your shoulder, looking at the results of other games. It’s down to us to step out on that pitch and do the business and get the results we need to climb the table.
When that happens, then the positive coverage will come back again.
Chelsea is always a massive game.
Obviously in the away game this season our goal got disallowed by VAR so I’m not sure how much I can say about that, but that was obviously disappointing.
We were winning and doing well there, then they scored two. Maxi scored at the end and they said I fouled their ‘keeper…
This is a massive game and they’ll be up for it as well as they’ve had a couple of games where they haven’t won and we’re feeling like we’re coming into our own, are flowing and feel like we’ve got a bit of momentum behind us.
They’re a top, top team when you see the players they have got, even on the bench, but it’s a home game, an early kick-off, a London derby, I’m sure the place will be rocking and we want to go and beat them.
Chelsea have obviously done things a different way, but they’ve got the resources and are building for the future.
If you look, they’ve bought players who are 21 or 22, so obviously they are there for a long-term project, to be there for however many years.
Sometimes it can take a bit of time to gel, particularly when players are new to the Premier League, but I’ve watched a few of their games and their players have looked really, really good.
So, it will be difficult, we know that, but it’s always a great game when we play Chelsea. The fans love it and we as players love playing in it as well.
I think we can build on our recent performances and we’ve got three good games behind us against Everton, Derby and Newcastle to give us that bit of confidence and feelgood going into this game.
We just need to start a bit quicker than we did at St James’ Park last weekend!
That said, we reacted well and controlled the game pretty well and could have won it. We need to start strong this afternoon, put them on the back foot.
I know it’s hard for people to be positive about the cup competitions when they see the position we’re in in the league, but we have taken the confidence from the cups into our Premier League games.
As players, we want to get everyone feeling positive and put smiles back on faces again and we can do that by winning games in every competition.
It’s down to us to put in the work and show proper fight like we did at Newcastle, where I thought there was the old West Ham in a nutshell.
We have got a good group of players here. It’s easy when you’re winning games to come in and be confident, but you also have to keep spirits high and not let it get you down too much when things are not going so well and we’ve done that.
It’s important to keep the positivity in the group because we have got the quality in the dressing room to kick on again in the second half of the season.
