Tomas Soucek looks to be back to his best for West Ham, and his renaissance speaks volumes about the Czech midfielder’s powers of recovery.
Like many, I had marked Soucek down as one of the first out the door upon the appointment of Julen Lopetegui. The midfielder was very much an eight-player built in the mould of former manager David Moyes, and I didn’t believe he would be adaptable enough to play in a more possession-based side.
However, I am delighted to say that I have been proven wrong, and the current version of Big Sou is far closer to the player we signed in desperation nearly five years ago. At that time, Moyes was firefighting and staring down the barrel of relegation, needing a goal-scoring midfielder to help the Hammers out of the mess.
Soucek initially joined on loan, but he was so successful that the transfer was made permanent, which was something of a no-brainer at the time. Throughout his West Ham career, Tomas’s role changed somewhat, most famously to accommodate the expanding game of academy graduate Declan Rice.
The box-to-box goal-scoring midfielder was turned into an auxiliary central defensive midfielder who was mandated to protect the goalkeeper far more than get into the opposition box.
And that really is where I expected the Soucek story to end. It had appeared that the positional switch had killed off any traces of the goal-scoring midfielder West Ham had signed in January 2020.
The 29-year-old has spent the past three years being assessed for what he couldn’t do rather than what he could, and I suspected his Hammers days were numbered. But to my surprise, the big fella has bounced back and now looks more like the 25-year-old version of himself who used to cause havoc among opposition defences.
There were many other players who stole the limelight in West Ham’s 4-1 victory against Ipswich last weekend, and rightly so. But whilst Kudus, Bowen, Antonio, and Todibo were dominating the column inches, Soucek was quietly going about his business.
Once again, he repeatedly got into dangerous positions in the opposition box, and his quick-thinking forward pass was instrumental in West Ham scoring the opener within the first minute. Soucek was also on hand to head the ball into the Ipswich net before Kudus snuck in and scored an important goal for himself.
Of course, there was his usual never-say-die running and unselfish commitment to the cause. But there were also a number of forward passes, including one particular Beckham-like cross-field pass that created a good attacking opportunity down West Ham’s left flank.
Most importantly, Julen Lopetegui trusts Soucek, and that says everything you need to know about his adaptability and staying power. As things stand, Soucek is the Hammers’ joint top scorer, and I wouldn’t bet against him netting plenty more.
He’ll never be easy on the eye like Kevin De Bruyne but Soucek has been instrumental in the Hammers journey that resulted in our first trophy win in over 4 decades and his story hasn’t finished yet.