I love it when people criticise me,” Marko Arnautovic says on a blustery afternoon at West Ham’s training ground. “There is no better feeling than when you make them quiet. You do what you have to do, the people on the television do what they have to do. They get paid for this. I get paid to play football and show everything I’ve got.”
Arnautovic is in good form going into Sunday’s game with Chelsea at the London Stadium and it does not take long for his self-confidence to appear. West Ham’s main man is only too happy to talk about his memories of scoring the winner in this fixture last season and he runs his index finger across his mouth to illustrate his point about silencing his detractors in the media. “All the criticism from you guys, all the criticism from the television guys, I made them a little bit quiet,” the Austrian says. “But this is how we players live. You get a lot of criticism but if it is going well you get praise.”
The contradiction is that Arnautovic knows he had much to prove when Chelsea traveled to east London last December. The 29-year-old is aware that his early performances for West Ham were below expectations after his £24m move from Stoke in the summer of 2017. He was sent off in his second game, a 3-2 defeat to Southampton, for elbowing Jack Stephens, and he failed to contribute a goal or assist in the Premier League before Slaven Bilic lost his job at the start of November. “People were hammering me,” he says.
“They said I didn’t track back. I watched the video and I tracked back. I was always with my full-back. People expected more because I came here for a lot of money. I needed to do some special things.
“It would be harsh to say he was sacked because of me. Maybe there were a couple of occasions when I let him down. I have a lot of respect for Slaven. I love him as a human being and as a coach. I let him down a little bit and I think he thought that as well. When he saw me playing as a striker and scoring goals, it wasn’t easy for him.”
The turning point came when David Moyes, Bilic’s replacement, asked Arnautovic if he would be comfortable playing as a center-forward against Chelsea. Released from his defensive responsibilities on the left wing, Arnautovic broke his duck and went on to score 11 goals as West Ham saved themselves from relegation. “It suits me to play there,” he says.
“Moyes got it into my mind to work hard, run as much as you can and the other things will come. I think he was impressed with my stats, because we had how many sprints you make and I was always up there. He said when he came that he thought I couldn’t run and I said: ‘It’s not true, I can run and I think I am quite quick.’ I showed him.”
Arnautovic has scored three times in five games this season and going into this weekend only Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah has had a hand in more Premier League goals in 2018. Arnautovic, who has spent the past week nursing a sore left knee, was inspirational when West Ham won 3-1 at Everton last Sunday after losing their first four league fixtures under Manuel Pellegrini.
With West Ham off the mark, Arnautovic can focus more on developing his relationship with Felipe Anderson and Andriy Yarmolenko. “I know what quality the new players have,” he says. “Against Everton, when Yarmolenko scored two goals I was very happy for him. I hope he’s going to score more – but I don’t think he will score more than me.” It is pointed out that Arnautovic laid Yarmolenko’s first goal on a plate. “I’m not a selfish guy,” he replies.
Some of Arnautovic’s former managers might not recognize this more mature figure. José Mourinho said that he had the “attitude of a child” when they worked together at Internazionale. According to Arnautovic, however, fatherhood has mellowed him. “I have two daughters,” he says. “I said to myself: ‘You can’t be like that, afterwards your daughter will read about you and think her dad was a crazy man.’”
All the same, he is an imposing figure, Arnautovic is growing a rugged beard – he strokes it and says it makes him look more beautiful – and while he insists that the incident with Stephens was an accident, there are moments in games when he looks like he might erupt. “The defenders make me very angry,” he says. “They are kicking, or they are pinching or they say things to me that I don’t like. They try to do everything to take me out of the game. I learned to keep my mouth shut, to keep my hands down, just try to put the ball in the net. This is the best answer.”
Which brings us on to his duel with Chelsea’s David Luiz on Sunday afternoon. “I rate Dave Luiz as a top defender,” he says. “He’s very clever. But I don’t know if he’s as quick as me. And if he kicks me, he kicks me. It’s fine. I can’t react to anything.”
(The Guardian)
