West Ham manager Slaven Bilic has admitted that his club’s record summer signing Marko Arnautovic is having a slow start at the club.
The Austrian arrived at the London Stadium during the summer for a fee worth up to £25 million but he has so far failed to hit the ground running at the club.
In only his second appearance for the club, he was sent off during a Premier League fixture for a dangerous elbow on Jack Stephens of Southampton and was banned for the next three games. He also had to miss the game against Swansea through illness.
Following Andy Carroll’s red-card against Burnley this week, Arnautovic was the player that Bilic opted to sacrifice at half time this weekend as he needed to change his side’s game-plan.
Bilic has now said of the player: “Yes, he has made a slow start but that is because he got suspended for three games and then he missed the last game because of the flu he got.
“His slow start is because of his mistake. This (substitution) was just tactical: he didn’t go out because of a bad performance, he was taken off because my staff and I decided we needed an extra man in midfield.”
