I don’t think many people can be surprised that Jarrod Bowen wasn’t called up to Lee Carsley’s recent England squad.
Our skipper hadn’t scored in the Premier League since the second weekend of the season against Crystal Palace and wasn’t in his best form for a number of weeks.
While it’s disappointing both for the club and Bowen himself that he won’t be in the squad to face Greece and Finland in the Nations League this week, you can’t blame him for preferring more in form players this time around.
After all, Three Lions fans have been crying out for an manager to pick players on form and not reputation for many years.
But after Morgan Gibbs-White was forced to withdraw from the squad through injury, it appeared to be inevitable that Bowen would be recalled to the squad to replace him. After all, Bowen responded to Carsley’s snub by scoring one and assisting a further two in West Ham‘s 4-1 thrashing of Ipswich over the weekend.
Instead, Carsley has opted against replacing the crocked Nottingham Forest winger.
Following the withdrawal of Gibbs-White, Ezri Konsa and Kobe Mainoo, the FA released this statement: “The trio all sustained injuries for their respective clubs over the weekend and have been ruled out of the Three Lions’ UEFA Nations League fixtures against Greece and Finland.
“All other 22 players are at St George’s Park with no further additions planned at this time.”
It truly is a baffling decision not to bring Bowen back into the conversation, not just to provide additional cover for the squad but also because of his performance against Ipswich.
That said, perhaps Carsley isn’t a big fan of Bowen after all. In his first squad since replacing Gareth Southgate as interim boss, Bowen was used for just 16 minutes across England’s 2-0 victories over Ireland and Finland.
Bizarrely, Bowen performed really well in his two cameos, but somehow Carsley doesn’t seem too interested in giving him another shot.
Bowen snub good news for West Ham
Still, this remains good news for West Ham.
That’s because it gives our club captain an opportunity to be at the training ground for the next two weeks and work closely with Julen Lopetegui.
After the win against Ipswich, attention will soon turn to the trip to Spurs and then the visit of Manchester United at the end of the month, and the boss will be desperate to work out how he can build on our first home win of the season by extending our unbeaten away form and climbing up the table and into the top 10.
Having Bowen on hand to talk tactics and strategy will be incredibly useful for Lopetegui in his planning, so while it’s disappointing we won’t have a West Ham player involved in England’s next two games, it might just work in our favour long term.
