The West Ham United manager has history with playing his best players out of position.
When West Ham United signed Javier Hernandez from Bayer Leverkusen earlier this summer it was hailed as a masterstroke, the Hammers finally bringing in a striker capable of scoring 20-plus goals a season and one with substantial Premier League experience to boot.
So what does West Ham manager Slaven Bilic do? After seeing him shine through the middle, scoring a brace against Southampton earlier in the campaign, he switches Hernandez out wide to accommodate Andy Carroll and watches as the Mexican international subsequently disappears.
Hernandez is not now and never will be a winger. He does his best work playing as a central striker, bursting into space and putting the finishing touches to the great work of the players behind him.
He needs to feed off wingers, not act as one himself, and his anonymous display for West Ham against West Bromwich Albion was testament to that.
The problem for West Ham supporters is that Bilic has previous in this regard, utilising one of his finest attacking players – Michail Antonio – as a right-back last season and wondering why everything was going wrong.
West Ham have the players to get out of their recent fug, but they need to play them where they can excel.
Using Hernandez out wide is like playing with 10 men, and while he can sometimes drop out there as he did to good effect at former club Manchester United, stationing him there for a whole match is foolish in the extreme.
West Ham have one of the most naturally goal-scorers of his generation at their disposal, and the sooner they realise how to get the best out of him, the better.
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