West Ham United attacker Jarrod Bowen admits his England World Cup hopes affected his form this season.
Like several of his West Ham teammates, the 26-year-old’s form dropped off markedly at the start of the new season and there was little discussion over Gareth Southgate’s decision to leave him out of his 26-man party for Qatar.
“I was disappointed, I was close,” Bowen said. “You can put too much pressure on yourself – that’s what I did at the start of the season.
“As much as you want to put the World Cup at the back of your mind, you know you are so close, you know it is such a big opportunity that may never come again so, of course, I was playing with a little bit of fear and anxiousness and that is normal. I don’t think I dealt with it very well but I will learn from that.
“You are trying to do things safely rather than playing your game. You want to look good instead of doing what you normally do to look good. It’s hard to explain and people listening will just say: ‘Well you should have just played your game’.
“[But] when you know you are so close, you try to play safe and try to not make a mistake so someone can’t say: ‘You didn’t deserve that’. You then end up playing worse than you were. That was the case for me. I am honest about that, I am not going to hide away from that.”
