West Ham boss Bilic wants Arnautovic ‘to push the borders’

Joe Williams

Slaven Bilic watched Marko Arnautovic inspire West Ham to a 3-0 Carabao Cup victory over Bolton and then demanded more from the Austrian playmaker.

Arnautovic marked his home debut after joining for £25million from Stoke during the summer by setting up goals for Angelo Ogbonna and Diafra Sakho before Arthur Masuaku struck an outstanding third deep into injury time.

The Hammers’ record signing was sent off for use of the elbow against Southampton last month in only his second appearance, delaying his first outing at London Stadium, and Bilic insisted his performance against Bolton began his path to redemption.

“I could have asked for more. I want him to do more. He’s got that quality and that something extra,” Bilic said.

“I like him as a player, but sometimes he gets happy with the few things that he does when I want him to push the borders.

“I know what he’s capable of and I want him to keep molesting the opposition and never be happy in a positive way. But of course he did the job here.

“After what happened last month, this is the beginning of the comeback for him.”

West Ham led after only half an hour, but they failed to dominate in the same way in the second half when Bolton pieced together promising spells.

“We’ve done the job. It was a really good performance in the first half and the opposition was from the Championship, so it’s not like they’re bad quality,” Bilic said.

“The only thing we weren’t happy with was that we didn’t score as many goals as we should have done.

“We ended the game with a wonder goal. It was a good night for us in the cup, we’re into the next round and kept a clean sheet which is important.”

Bolton manager Phil Parkinson was impressed by the way his side recovered after a dreadful opening at London Stadium.

“It was the worst start we could have asked for, conceding a soft goal from a cheap free-kick and for a while we struggled to contain some very talented West Ham players,” Parkinson said.

“We stood up in the second half as a team and there was a real honesty about the way we went about our business

“At 2-0 down at West Ham it could have gone one of two ways but we did loads better and we can take heart from that.

“We made a lot of changes and picked a lot of players who haven’t had much football over the last few weeks. We pieced the team together.

“To ask them to go out against a team as good as West Ham was obviously going to be tough, but at 2-0 down the lads were excellent. The third goal was a wonder strike we couldn’t do much about.”