West Ham’s understated front three provide the perfect contradiction to the club’s fickle transfer strategy

Michail Antonio, Jarrod Bowen and Pablo Fornals are not the first attacking trio that springs to mind but they are providing relief at a club that will take anything it can to soothe the soul

Michail Antonio, Jarrod Bowen and Pablo Fornals spearheaded West Ham's victory over Leicester (Getty)

Jarrod Bowen breaks through the middle of the Leicester City half, not for the first time, with two options. After a couple of looks, he decides against continuing on himself and chooses to find the teammate on his right. But the pass is not what it should be.

His usually trusty left foot has let him down. Not by much, but enough that teammate Michail Antonio has to readjust his stride to collect. Enough to allow the opposition a fraction more of a second to catch up. Having sorted his feet out effectively, Antonio would make the next mistake.

With a defender to shake off to ensure there is open turf between him and the goal, he opts for a heavier touch to allow him room to gallop beyond his marker. But this one is too heavy, allowing Kasper Schmeichel to come and dissipate any threat. Just like that, the moment is lost.

Both Antonio and Bowen puff in dismay. Both irritated that two relatively simple moves they usually execute perfectly were off-key. As one apologises to the other and their teammates, hands raised and heads bowed, they notice Mark Noble and Sebastian Haller begin their enthusiastic on-the-spot jogs on the touchline. Before the fourth official has raised his board, they begin trudging over.

They did not look like satisfied men. Certainly not two who, along with Pablo Fornals, contributed one each of the 3-0 scoreline against a side who challenged for a Champions League spot last season and, more recently, turned over Manchester City 5-2. It was, however, reflective of the relentlessness attitude of this trio. That on 88 minutes, even though the game was won, their standards should not slip.

In the world of front threes, Antonio-Bowen-Fornals probably doesn’t register. It’s not a combination to get the heart racing like the supercars of Salah-Mane-Firmino. Nor does it let your imagination run wild like the puppy love trio of Haaland-Sancho-Reyna. It barely makes its way off the tongue without eliciting a double-take. “Them? Really???”

But for West Ham United fans existing in a constant state of paranoia, fearful of being a few dud results away from a relegation scrap or anxious of what the latest boardroom-induced drama might be, these three are doing their bit to soothe those souls. Sunday was the latest example.

On a weekend of freak results, this one at the King Power Stadium lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. West Ham had just over 30 per-cent possession but out-shot and out-hustled a Leicester side who had won all of their first three matches. Of the 14 shots taken by the visitors, eight came from their front three, including five of the six on target.

The leader of this East End rat-pack is Antonio, the arch agent of industry. There is little mystery to his work, just an unpretentious regard for football's whims that the rest of us overcomplicate. He will try what he's going to try and, if it doesn't work, he'll simply try harder.

Antonio is the leader of West Ham's East End rat pack (Getty)

His performance was a snapshot of how he earned David Moyes' favour at the start of the 2019/20 resumption. No battle was shirked, whether on the floor (where he contested 18 duels) or in the air (11). The four fouls he sustained were textbook examples of where and when to take contact to quell any enthusiasm Leicester were trying to build.

Even his goal – a header rising at the back post after 14 minutes - came from being upended, spreading the ball to the opposite wing and immediately darting into the box to make himself available for Aaron Cresswell's deep cross. It was his 10th goal since the return of the Premier League in June, and a fifth successive away match on the scoresheet.

A phase before the opener, Bowen had provided one of his highlight-reel moments. Seemingly blocked in at the right-back position by blue shirts, a drop of the shoulder, a roll of his boot and flick somehow maintained him as the centre of their attention yet with the ball safely out of danger and making its way up the West Ham right flank.

Bowen’s craft exists beyond a left foot that could sign his autographs. In an XI set-up for reliability, the 23-year old is encouraged to use his imagination, and trusted to use it sparingly. He attempted just 20 passes, 13 of them with a view to pushing things along in the opposition half.

What's more, he is responsible for providing almost all of the creativity from the right. And though sometimes that can be predictable given his penchant for cutting inside onto his natural foot, once the game was stretched, it was here where his goal would come: picking up a perfectly weighted through-ball to neatly tuck past Schmeichel for the third of the game and his third of the season after a brace in the 4-0 win over Wolves.

That assist was one of three key passes made by Fornals. He has now put on more goals (7) since the start of 2019/20,  than any West Ham player across this period. Not bad considering he is not on set-pieces.

Pablo Fornals showed the right signs on Sunday if he is to win over the fans (Getty)

Of the three, the Spaniard is perhaps the hardest to peg. At times over the last 12 months he has looked lost, an image not helped by the kind of ruddy-cheeked impishness that’s frowned upon in the fairylands of English football. But he has emerged as the counterpoint to the other two. Efficient with the ball at his feet, facilitating as best he can in the final third.

His emergence as a regular starter is probably the most surprising, too, and there will be some fans who will need to see more to commit themselves to him fully. But this busy performance capped off by a goal and an assist should help.

Beyond their starting positions and effectiveness, Antonio, Bowen and Fornals are bound by something greater. They are all loose representations of the fickleness of transfer strategies in modern football.

Fornals arrived from Villareal last summer, his £24m fee a reflection of the European ambition held by Manuel Pelligrini. A real status signing. Yet when the Chilean sacked was sacked with West Ham forced to look over their shoulders at relegation, Bowen arrived in January as a £20m-plus sticking plaster. All the while the club was hoping they could outgrow Antonio, a player whose linear ways saw him start 2019/20 in the shade of record-signing Haller, only to carry them to safety during Project Restart.

Here these glorious misfits remain. Not simply commanding their starting places but keeping out the £97m trio of Haller, Felipe Anderson and Andriy Yarmolenko while doing so. 

After two defeats in the opening two league games and the sale of Grady Diangana, the discontent in east London was palpable. Now, two wins and two cleansheets later, there is cautious optimism as they sit 10th into the international break. 

Of course, the broader issues for West Ham fans around the running of the club by David Gold, David Sullivan and Karen Brady remain, and results on the field will only change that so much. But as #GSBOut continues to stir, #ABF up top provides some welcome relief from the woes upstairs.