Gianluca Scamacca nearing Premier League start, says West Ham boss David Moyes

Gianluca Scamacca has thrust himself into contention to kickstart West Ham’s Premier League season after another goal in Europe.

The Italy striker, a £30million summer signing from Sassuolo, scored his second goal in two play-off ties against Danish side Viborg as the Hammers booked their place in the group stage of the Europa Conference League.

Scamacca has yet to start a Premier League game but, with West Ham bottom of the table without a point or a goal from their first three matches, he must be in line to start at Aston Villa on Sunday.

Manager David Moyes told the club website: “I thought Gianluca did a lot of good things.

“Again, we can’t be expecting too much from him too soon. We need to give him a chance to get ready, but he certainly did a great job for us.

“Look, he scored two goals for us in two games, so he’s certainly getting a lot closer to being ready to play now.”

Scamacca opened the scoring with a near-post volley from Tomas Soucek’s cross after 22 minutes.

Said Benrahma and Soucek also found the net after the break to put the seal on a 3-0 win in Denmark and a 6-1 aggregate success.

West Ham reached the semi-finals of the Europa League last season and Moyes has targeted another run in the lower-tier Conference League.

“It is a special thing being in Europe and what makes it really special is that you don’t get it very often,” added Moyes.

“You can sometimes find people who treat it with a bit of disrespect, but I wanted to make sure we treat it with great respect because I want us to try and do well and compete in it.

“Now we’ve got another period of European football and playing games in places we’ve maybe not done before, so we look forward to it.

“The only way you get in Europe is if you do well in your domestic league, so we’ve done well in our domestic league the last couple of years.

“That got us in it, and I want to try and do well in it.

“We tried really hard last year and we had a great run in it and now we’ll obviously try and do the same in this competition.”