Former Stoke City man Robert Huth tore into West Ham United attacker Marko Arnautovic about how difficult he can be to work with.
The two players were together at the bet365 Stadium, and Huth has lifted the lid on just how frustrating the mercurial Austrian international can be.
The BBC pundit claimed Arnautovic was hard to motivated and if he decided to down tools then there was no getting through to him.
“I played with Marko and he can be difficult, make no mistake about that,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live [08/04; 19:53]. “One day you could come in and he’d be happy as anything, [then] for one game you’d look at him and think ‘any chance of doing anything – just run around?’
“You literally couldn’t motivate him. You could be shouting at him, you could be cuddling him, telling him how great he is, and he’d just decide today’s not the day. There’s games where you could rip your hair out and go ‘come on, we need more from you’. I think once he’s made his mind up like that it’s difficult [for him] to get motivated.”
OPINION
This is pretty much the standard story on Arnautovic at this stage of his career. He is a wonderfully talented player and always has been, but he has routinely frustrated teammates and managers throughout his career. It does seem to be a question of motivation with the 29-year-old. When he wants to play he is as difficult to deal with as any attacker in the Premier League, but when he doesn’t fancy it you’re essentially playing with 10 men. That’s what Huth is getting at here, and you can only imagine how frustrating playing with Arnautovic can be at times. That’s what really shines through from Huth’s comments. What started out as a question about what you would do with Arnautovic if you were West Ham boss Manuel Pellegrini turned into a bit of an attack from Huth on his former teammate. That speaks volumes about how irritating the Austrian’s lack of effort was and is for his teammates.
