Jarrod Bowen really didn’t want to be issuing a rallying cry to an irate West Ham United fanbase just one game into the new Premier League season.
But after Graham Potter’s side collapsed at Sunderland – Eliezer Mayenda, Dan Ballard and Wilson Isidor all scoring within 30 second-half minutes on Wearside – the captain clearly felt he had no choice but to demand an immediate response.
On a day when West Ham’s £106 million central defensive trio went missing, Jean-Clair Todibo, Nayef Aguerd and Max Kilman nowhere to be seen as Mayenda and Ballard struck a quickfire double, and £18 million goalkeeper Mads Hermansen marked his debut with a late blunder, even Potter’s talismanic skipper was powerless to prevent such a crushing defeat.
Jarrod Bowen barely had a meaningful kick once Sunderland took control.
The nature of this defeat, three unanswered goals away to last season’s play-off champions, also means West Ham United host bitter rivals Chelsea on Friday under considerable pressure from a long-since disillusioned fanbase.
Jarrod Bowen desperate for West Ham United to respond in front of London Stadium crowd
The atmosphere heading into the new campaign was already somewhat strained.
While West Ham are trying to solve their midfield issues – Southampton rejected that £30 million Mateus Fernandes bid a few days earlier – some contentious transfer market dealings and the ongoing employment of the divisive Graham Potter hardly feels conducive to creating the right kind of feeling on the terraces.
The jubilation displayed by the Sunderland supporters even before it became clear which direction the points were heading in may not be easily replicated at the London Stadium.
“You don’t want to fall in the rut of, it’s the early end of the season,” Bowen admits. “You want to put it right straight away. We wanted to put it right today, but we haven’t.
“And you don’t want to say, we’ll be better next week, we’ll do this, we’ll do that, because we have to be. There are no excuses. You want to put it right, and we have an opportunity to do that at home Friday night.
“[Chelsea are] a tough opponent, we know that. But we’re at home, we can use our advantages. And we have to look at ourselves and be better. You’re going into that game, coming off the back of losing 3-0 in the first game of the season, so if that doesn’t gee you up, and that doesn’t make you want to give a reaction from inside, then we’ve got somewhere wrong.
“So we have to react well for Friday.”
Bowen ‘fuming’ after Sunderland rip through Graham Potter’s side
Bowen knows that he does not need to remind the supporters of the importance of a raucous home crowd.
In any case, while he is just about the last person to blame, the skipper probably feels that now is not the time to be issuing demands of a fanbase making the long, sorry trip back to London.
“The fans will be most disappointed out of everyone,” Bowen accepts. “And coming up here today, they’re expecting more. We all need to give them more.
“So they probably don’t want to hear me saying this now, they want to see it on the pitch. That’s the message that we have to give ourselves. But we have to react.
“We know they’ll turn up Friday. They stand by us through thick and thin. I spoke about the other day, that the bad times made the good times as a team. But like I said, they probably don’t want to hear me.”
BBC Sport pundit Pat Nevin felt Graham Potter would be ‘fuming’ after Sunderland’s opener. A simple cross and a simple header.
Bowen uses exactly the same word, meanwhile, to describe his own post-match emotions.
“I’m obviously fuming,” the club’s second-highest all-time Premier League goalscorer admits.
“If you don’t take your opportunities, it’s only a matter of time [before your opponents do]. If you don’t defend well enough [they score], and I thought the goals were quite easy. We’re all disappointed in the manner that we conceded the goals.
“You’re going to lose games at this level if that happens. So obviously, I’m disappointed and fuming with the start that we’ve had today.
“I just don’t think we started the second half with the same intensity as the first half. That’s annoying on our behalf, because that’s the mindset thing from us as a group of players, to keep going, to make sure we win this game, because we knew we didn’t have time coming in. If we’d done what we’d done in the first half in the second, we’d win the game.
“But we didn’t do that.”
