David Moyes has admitted that the midfield partnership of Declan Rice and Lucas Paqueta has not yet resulted in more goals but West Ham United have played well with the ball with the duo at the base of midfield.
After the resumption of the Premier League on Boxing Day, Moyes deployed Paqueta in a deeper role alongside Rice in the Hammers' 2-0 defeat to Brentford, compared to his usual advanced position.
The Scottish coach said he would continue to do so to ' see how that works ' and there is a possibility that Moyes repeats the same tactic against Leeds United on Wednesday night. Speaking prior to the clash at Elland Road, Moyes explained why the switch was made in the first place and that there are a host of other options in midfield to allow for rest and rotation ahead of a busy January schedule.
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"I thought we played well with the ball, moved it a bit quicker, but we also changed the shape for that game," he said. "We wanted to try and see if we could get a bit more and we hoped that it might have got us some more goals on the night as well. It didn’t quite.
"I thought they did well together but we’ve got [Flynn] Downes, [Manuel] Lanzini and [Tomas] Soucek who can all play as midfield players as well. We’ve got lots of games coming up and I need to see how I keep them all fit and ready. We’re trying to find that special balance which gets us the result. We’re hunting for that at the moment.
"I see it in certain games, I thought it might have suited at the London Stadium and found us a way to play. I think in many ways it did, we had lots of crosses and balls into the box, we just weren’t either good enough or Brentford defended incredibly well. I see the partnership definitely at times but there’ll be other times when I don’t see it."
For the Leeds clash, Kurt Zouma and Maxwel Cornet are definitely ruled out while Nayef Aguerd could get his first start since joining in the summer having returned from the World Cup recovering from a virus and injury.
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