Midfielder Tomáš Souček is itching to get stuck into Saturday’s return to Premier League action, as West Ham United travel to London rivals Arsenal looking to bounce back to winning ways.
The Hammers are set to the make the short journey north on the back of successive defeats, away at Chelsea and at home to Brentford last time out, a run which has left them 16th in the standings with 13 games of 2024/25 to play.
Souček - who has scored five goals in 26 appearances in all competitions this season, and recently captained the side in Jarrod Bowen’s injury absence - admits that the first-half performance against the Bees in particular wasn’t good enough, and insists the whole team is ready to fight for all three points against the title-challenging Gunners.
“We have to learn from the Brentford game, because it wasn’t good enough, especially in the first half,” the 29-year-old said. “We conceded an early goal, and overall we were poor.
“We had a meeting after the game and went through what we should be doing, and how we should be playing for each other.
“Up to now we we’ve struggled to put all the positive work from training into practice, but we need to show responsibility after last week, come out fighting and start a good run of form as we head towards the end of the season.”
It is now little over six weeks since the appointment of Head Coach Graham Potter, and though results have been mixed, Souček is in no doubt about the influence exerted by the boss.
The recent arrival of forward Evan Ferguson and the return of James Ward-Prowse from his loan spell at Nottingham Forest has helped inject extra energy into the first-team camp too, and with the side having shown flashes of quality in recent games, our No28 is confident it won’t be long before the whole group is at it for the full 90 minutes.
“He’s [Potter] not been here very long, but he’s got clear messages, and ideas about tactics and set-pieces, and other stuff we’ve been going through in training, which has been great,” continued Souček.
“It’s always good when fresh faces come in, and having Evan around the place and James back has brought a good feeling, and as a team I think we’re in a really good place.
“We’ve shown flashes in a few different games, and we’ve shown what we are capable of at times, but now we need to do it for the whole match, and start coming away from games with points because that’s the most important thing. Hopefully we can do that at Arsenal.”
An away fixture against a side who have been beaten just twice in the league this season, and not since the start of November, may seem an unenviable task on paper, but Souček and his teammates are taking plenty of heart from their 2-0 win on their last visit to the Emirates, in December 2023.
Indeed, our Czech Republic international opened the scoring that day, ahead of Dinos Mavropanos’ second-half strike, and the former is excited to try and help repeat that feat.
Souček added: “Arsenal away is probably one of the toughest games there is, but I remember when we beat them at the Emirates last season, so I know we can do it. It’s a big challenge, but it’s an exciting one.
“We have to compete, try to maybe overrun them and be more competitive than they are. We know they have injuries, but they have lots of quality so we have to be ready to face whoever is named in their team. It’s going to be an interesting match.”
