West Ham United advanced to the fourth round of the FA Cup on Sunday afternoon as they beat fellow Premier League outfit Leeds United 2-0 at the London Stadium to set up a trip to National League North outfit Kidderminster Harriers.
Manuel Lanzini and Jarrod Bowen scored the goals in a routine performance against Marcelo Bielsa's side, who will make the same trip down from Yorkshire in seven days time for the Premier League fixture.
However, despite progress in the competition for David Moyes' outfit, one of the Scotsman's most reliable players, Tomas Soucek, had a forgettable afternoon in East London.
The Czech Republic international mustered a 6.7/10 rating from SofaScore, below his average rating of 6.99 in the Premier League this campaign.
The 26-year-old, who is usually a colossal presence in the middle for West Ham, could only complete 46% of his duels whilst making just one tackle and two interceptions.
Moreover, the midfielder only made 46 touches whilst losing the ball on seven occasions, an average of 6.57.
In fairness to Soucek, he did have an impressive passing accuracy of 92%, however, the performance was below the admittedly high standard that he has set for himself since arriving in East London from Slavia Prague in July 2020.
Last season the £47k-per-week Czech was a revelation as the Hammers went on to finish sixth in the Premier League and qualify for the Europa League group stages.
Soucek played every single minute of West Ham's Premier League campaign last season as David Moyes' side secured European football, scoring ten goals whilst operating as a defensive-minded midfielder.
This campaign, the 26-year-old has picked up from where he left off, making 28 appearances in all competitions, scoring three goals, all of which in the Premier League.
It is because of these high standards that an average performance looked particularly underwhelming and Moyes will hope to have the best version of his midfielder as often as possible with the Hammers set for a significant second half of the season.