Kudus shows what Hammers fans wish for and why they won’t be careful about it

West Ham fans are constantly told to be careful what they wish for.

First of all, we really, really hate that entire concept. It seems to us entirely at odds with what football fandom is meant to be about. ‘Be careful what you wish for’ is just such a dreary way to live your life as a football fan.

Get too deep into being careful what you wish for and where do you end up? We’ll tell you where: you end up becoming Crystal Palace, finishing 13th with 47 points every season. It’s no life, is it?

West Ham fans shouldn’t be careful what they wish for, they should wish for watching far more football like they saw tonight in a tubthumping Europa League last-16 second-leg demolition of Freiburg. They should want to watch Jarrod Bowen and especially Lucas Paqueta but especially Mohammed Kudus have this much fun so much more often.

They were all brilliant, with Kudus adding a magnificent closing one-two punch with a pair of stunning goals to round off this sparkling 5-0 win. Even the indirect helping hand it might have handed Spurs won’t vex Hammers too much.

One of the reasons two-legged ties are such good fun is that they just create such a wildly different dynamic that simply can’t be found in any other kind of football. Starting a game with a deficit does wonders for focusing the mind and excising doubt.

Sure, West Ham’s deficit was only a single goal, but they set about this second leg with ferocious determination to wipe that out instantly. It took eight-and-a-half minutes to do so, and even at that early stage, it was a goal that had been coming.

For three corners in a row, Freiburg failed to track the run of Tomas Soucek. This is, it would be fair to say, a bold approach to defending a West Ham set-piece. The third time was the charm, with his flick turned in at the far post by Paqueta.

The fear with the goal coming so quickly, especially for a West Ham side who haven’t always played with this kind of forward-thinking progressive intent is that a ‘so… now what?’ stick-or-twist confusion settles in. For a few minutes, it did. Freiburg had an instant chance to equalise before the bubbles had even finished drifting across the playing surface.

But West Ham soon restored control and by the end of the night were in magnificently full flight. Bowen scored a fine second, Aaron Cresswell made it three just after half-time, and then Kudus provided the most glorious finishing touches.

His first goal was a solo effort from the top drawer and starting deep in his own half, and his second made to look dismissively easy, simply rolling the ball out from his feet and finding the bottom corner before immediately departing the scene, his job very much done.

That first goal really is something special. Any time a player scores a goal and pundits can go “It’s like Diego Maradona” without sounding insane, you know you’re looking at something a bit special. Even the eventual finish with his weaker right foot was startlingly assured and composed given the absolute nonsense he’d just performed over the previous five or six seconds.

Not for the first time we found ourselves wondering just how on earth David Moyes had convinced Kudus and Paqueta to join.

Not for the first time we found ourselves wondering what, precisely, was going through Erik Ten Hag’s mind when he decided to bring f***ing Antony with him from Ajax to Manchester United for absolutely all of the money instead of Kudus, a player with so much more about him.

Paqueta was perhaps the best of West Ham’s attacking players in the first half, but once he departed on the hour this became the Kudus show. Long before his showstopper of a fourth goal he was delighting the crowd with flicks and tricks against a proud but well-beaten Freiburg side.

He toyed with them. It was glorious. It was thrilling. It was what West Ham fans desperately want and, frankly, who wouldn’t?

The upshot of a night like this is that West Ham and their manager remain an enigmatic puzzle. They are objectively having a good season, but you wouldn’t always know it from the general mood around the place.

Moyes could win back-to-back European trophies at a club that had gone over 40 years without and still find himself unwanted by a large section of the fanbase. Moyes can oversee performances of this attacking verve and wit and yet still fail to win over large sections of the fanbase because they want to see performances of this attacking verve and wit.

And… we get it. Moyes is in the curious position now where he almost cannot win. When you watch Paqueta, Bowen and Kudus play this well together it’s impossible not to idly wonder what a less miserable manager might do with it all. Even as Moyes has them playing as well as this. It’s a paradox all right.

It sounds like a harsh whinge on this sort of night, but they simply don’t play like this anywhere near as often as they should. And Moyes is now stuck. When they don’t play like this, he gets stick for being moribund. And when they do, he gets stick for it not happening more often.

But that’s his lot. Tonight, West Ham showed precisely what their fans wish for. And there’s absolutely no reason why anyone should want to be careful about that.