West Ham United midfielder Alex Kral has revealed that early into his Hammers loan spell, he felt as if he was not going to play many minutes for the club.
Following in the footsteps of national team colleagues Tomas Soucek and Vladimir Coufal, Czech Republic international midfielder Kral joined West Ham on loan for the duration of last season from Spartak Moscow but Kral made just six appearances for the club, only playing one minute of Premier League football.
Kral has again left the Russian club on loan and is now in Germany on a loan spell with Schalke in the Bundesliga and has been speaking about his time in east London.
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The 24-year-old admits it was tough for him to not be given many chances by manager David Moyes, especially considering he was fit for almost all of the campaign.
“I am a young player who always wants to play and for that reason at West Ham was a hard time for me”, he told Capital Football. “Really fast I recognised I won’t play in too many games, so I worked on my weaknesses in each training.
“[David] Moyes didn’t speak much with me, he was detached. I only spoke to him one time when I went to him, asking him what I needed to improve to play, at a time when [Declan] Rice and Tomas [Soucek] were out of the game.
“But something was off because if I had been doing everything right I’d be playing, no? So, I tried to speak like this with him, I didn’t go and ask: ‘Why am I not playing?’ But he kept saying that I needed to wait for my chance, the rest was between him and me.
“I kept training hard, apart from one week when I had Coronavirus, I was never injured, I was ready. Sadly, there wasn’t much communication, but he wasn’t like that just to me. It’s just the way Moyes is and I don’t take it personally. I respect David and it was a good lesson, using it to my advantage to work on my weaknesses.”
Kral and former captain Mark Noble were the understudies in midfield last term to current captain Declan Rice and Czech Republic’s international captain Soucek.
Three of Kral’s six appearances in a West Ham shirt came in the Hammers’ run to the Europa League semi-finals, narrowly losing over two legs to eventual competition winners Eintracht Frankfurt.
The midfielder says that he and other players felt that at times in last year’s busy season that there were opportunities to rotate players more, although Moyes stuck to his guns, with Rice and Soucek among the five players to play more than 50 club matches last term.
“They are really good players who played well and were healthy so there wasn’t something that someone was injured and you’d go in,” explained Kral. “I don’t know how many games Declan played last season, over 60? And the same Tomáš.
“From my opinion I want to play but even if I was a coach, I want to rotate the team. I feel there was a space to use me more in the Europa League, for example in Frankfurt the team was really tired but Moyes had his own players.
“Sometimes I’d feel it, the players would feel it, that we should change a little bit to refresh the team, but Moyes saw it differently and I respect it. In the end the results spoke for him, if he hadn’t had them it would have been different.”
Kral has been looking back on his former side, who have so far struggled in the Premier League this term, sitting 16th and a point clear of the relegation zone following nine league defeats from their opening 15 games.
However, the former Irons loanee has backed West Ham to get their season back on track in the league, as well as tipping them to have a chance of winning Europa Conference League.
“The Premier League is so, so hard. Last season we scored many goals from set-pieces and these goals helped us,” said Kral. “But West Ham really have quality players after changing so much and there are still so many games, the season is long.”
Kral added: “Last year we had a big chance of winning the Europa League and this year it can be the same, winning the Conference League is possible even if English teams prefer to focus on the Premier League. I have many friends there and wish them all the best.”
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