These have been turbulent weeks for West Ham, but in amongst all the angst and uncertainty, Carlos Soler has been easing into his loan spell nicely.
As the Hammers head to the south coast for Monday night's meeting with Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium, Soler does so on the back of a run of four straight starts.
That marks a sharp contrast from his first couple of months of action (coupled with plenty of inaction), when Soler’s only start in his first eight Premier League games for the Hammers came at home to Manchester United in a 2-1 win. With the score at 0-0 and Julen Lopetegui minded to change tack, Soler was one of three men hauled off at the interval.
Now, though, Lopetegui appears to have moved Soler ahead of Lucas Paqueta in the pecking order. The biggest threat to Soler’s hopes of starting each week seems to be if the manager wants to opt for Jarrod Bowen on the right, Crysencio Summerville on the left, and for Mohammed Kudus to replace Soler down the middle.
Making his mark: Carlos Soler has begun to have a real impact on loan at West Ham
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The 3-1 defeat by Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester a fortnight ago made for a bleak evening in more ways than simply the glacial air, but among very few positives on the night for West Ham was evidence of Soler growing in confidence in claret and blue.
Just days earlier, the 27-year-old had registered his first goal contribution since signing on loan from Paris Saint-Germain when he glided past Martin Odegaard as though he wasn’t there, before feeding an inch-perfect through-ball between the Arsenal legs and into the path of Aaron Wan-Bissaka to score in the 5-2 defeat by the Gunners.
It was a coup for West Ham to sign Soler in the first place. This is a player who scored for Spain at the 2022 World Cup and joined PSG at the beginning of the 2022/23 season after rising from Valencia’s academy to become the club’s best player.
Soler is understandably on costly wages, and his loan from PSG is not understood to include an obligation to buy. But if the 2020 Olympic silver medalist continues to grow in stature at the London Stadium, the Hammers will surely scope out the feasibility of signing him permanently.
Soler is beginning to show his ability to knit play together, and it feels about time that West Ham show cohesion on the pitch more consistently than merely every once in a while under Lopetegui’s watch.
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While Paqueta’s future is up in the air, Soler has been showing his own pedigree in recent weeks. If West Ham are to make a success of a season that got off to such a false start, he could be key.