PAQUETA HAS BEEN MOYE-TY

DAVID Moyes is calling on Lucas Paqueta to bring out the Brazilian flair after granting the West Ham midfielder his wish of playing in a deeper role.

Paqueta, a club-record €56.8m signing from Lyon last September, was brought in as a No10 who the manager thought could provide “eight to 10 goals” a season.

But since returning from the World Cup, the South American has mostly been used in his preferred holding position after convincing Moyes

that he could more impactful there.

Today’s opponents Newcastle were also interested in Paqueta last summer and, after an initially tricky couple of months in London, Moyes is now urging him to kick on as West Ham look to steer clear of relegation.

“He’s a good type, really is,” Moyes said. “Take the word ‘Brazilian’ away and look at the other side — his effort, his commitment, his application to get about and do the work. That has been so, so good.

“But now what we want is a bit of Brazilian — scoring the goals, making the goals and making the difference when we need it. That’s the little bit that we’ve missed.

Playing

“I’m pleased with how he’s coming along. It’s not easy to settle in. He missed the first month of the season and then had to come into a side that — I wouldn’t say we were struggling

— but we hadn’t been playing as well as we had done. He was coming in to make a difference and it didn’t quite go that way.”

Moyes believes moving

Paqueta alongside Declan Rice in midfield has “disrupted some other things” and warned that other alterations may be needed.

That potentially includes Rice having to limit his own desire to get forward.

“With Lucas moving back, it means Dec has to do a little bit more of a steady job because Lucas is certainly closer to being an attacking midfielder than a defensive one,” Moyes added.

“We’ve been trying to find ways of scoring goals. Sometimes we’ve said we won’t play Tomas (Soucek) to try and get a more attacking midfield player in alongside Declan. We’ve been tweaking that as well.”