West Ham must replace Declan Rice but pivotal Lucas Paqueta can lead new era

But as this ultimately historic season has worn on, that is the level of affection with which West Ham supporters have come to view the eponymous son of a land mass not even half-a-square-mile in size, an auto-free zone where the only modes of transport are pedal bikes and horse-drawn carriages.

Note the wonderful irony in the most popular Hammers banner on display at the Eden Arena in Prague this week, which, riffing off the catchy television advert, declared ‘Just sold my car, to Lucas Paqueta’. Back home, he would not have much use for it.

There again, after his moment of magic on Wednesday night, there would be plenty of Hammers fans quite happy to hand their entire estates over to Paqueta for nothing, his sensational pass sending Jarrod Bowen through in the 90th minute to score perhaps the club’s most celebrated goal in 43 years.

The assist was a thing of beauty, the pass itself of laser-like precision and sublime weight, but made all the more impressive by the tiniest of windows for execution, the ball breaking unexpectedly after a ricochet off Sofyan Amrabat, Paqueta taking one touch and then the crucial glance up to spot Bowen’s dart before playing his second, the killer ball. A fraction of a second later, and either the winger would have strayed offside or Rolando Mandragora would have got a foot in on the provider first. Most likely, both.

Paqueta is not merely the only player in this West Ham team who could have created a goal in such fashion, but probably the first in any since Dimitri Payet.

The 25-year-old was not a player on West Ham’s radar this time last year, as David Moyes planned the squad rebuild that he hoped would not only elevate the club’s League position but also their style of play. There had been bigger sides in for the Brazilian, and the Hammers thought him to be beyond their reach until, eventually, he fell into their lap, albeit for a club-record fee which could rise to £51million with add-ons.

A tenacious, gutsy player, Paqueta was soon a case study in disproving the lazy assumption that adapting to English football is simply a question of physicality and spirit, the new arrival not lacking for either — nor quality — but still struggling to settle.

In the past three months in particular, though, and with Declan Rice on the brink of departure, he has come to look like a player the club ought to build their midfield around.

“He’s incredible, honestly, he’s absolutely incredible,” Rice said last month. “I think now you’re seeing the real Lucas. Some of the stuff he does, even in training, it’s just mind-boggling how good he is.”

Quite what that new midfield will look like remains to be seen. Replacing Rice will almost certainly be a two-man job, and the profile of West Ham’s signings will dictate the structure of their engine room.

Paqueta has operated in three distinct roles this season. Early in the campaign, he was deployed as a traditional No10, but West Ham are not a team built around retaining final-third possession and struggled to find their supposed fulcrum between the lines. Having seen his record buy excel in a deeper role for Brazil at the World Cup, Moyes experimented with Paqueta alongside Rice in a double-pivot, where he was more involved but too far from goal.

The 4-3-3 of recent months has hit on a golden zone, Paqueta operating as more of a box-to-box player and at his most dangerous in transition. That, fittingly, is the state in which West Ham’s midfield finds itself this summer, from which Paqueta is sure to emerge as pivotal.