MAYBE ARSENAL
Arsenal 2 West Ham 0
Arsenal have beaten West Ham at the Emirates three times in the last four years by the odd goal in a fixture that even the most ardent and partisan Gooner would have to admit has never been short of good fortune for the home side. This evening’s ‘entertainment’ provides more than the usual slices of good fortune for the mercurial north Londoners, and in the end they win it by two clear goals.
So why do West Ham keep on coming up short against one of the most ordinary Arsenal sides of recent years? West Ham haven’t actually beaten the Goons since Declan Rice scored the winner against them as a teenager in January 2019. Nearly four years later a subsequent victory over the knolled enemy has again eluded the Hammers.
So what went wrong? Hammers were without Zouma, Ogbonna and Cresswell, the latter still not recovered from a battering by a post at the Etihad, but Coufal was back and the mercurial Masuaku drafted in again at the back. Coufal was a significant inclusion, stepping ahead of Ben Johnson in the pecking order, after a lengthy injury.
Out of all these players, Coufal is the key to how the match unravels. He is booked for a supposed elbow on Lacazette in the eleventh minute. An early booking in any game is a worry, additionally so if you are a defender, and so it proves this evening. Arsenal take the lead early in the second half, but then comes the match-defining moment as Coufal dispossesses Lacazette in the box, and is then sent off for a ‘foul’ that the referee Anthony Taylor resists protests from the West Ham players to have checked on VAR.
Premier League officials will be admitting this was a shittingly wrong decision a few days from now, but for the moment Fabianski faces the diving talent Lacazette to try to keep Arsenal’s lead over ten man West Ham down to one.
He rises to the challenge with athleticism and anger at the decision to guess right and palm the effort away to eventual safety. For the remaining twenty minutes West Ham raise their efforts to secure major possession stats, but fail to achieve the penetration necessary to adjust the score line.
As if the storyteller needed any more prompting to then secure the points with a second Arsenal goal two minutes from time from a breakaway. Emile Smith Rowe, whose name sounds like someone stopped in their tracks calling a class register, finishes a decent move and Hammers lose by more than one goal for the first time in a season’s worth of matches.
Yes, it seems as though Moyes’ magnificent marauders can beat anyone except this lot – and Brighton. Something to remember when Hammers play the Arse again in the League on April 30th next year.
1 Lucasz Fabiański, 23 Arthur Masuaku, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 41 Declan Rice (c), 15 Craig Dawson, 23 Issa Diop, 8 Pablo Fornals, 28 Tomas Souček, 10 Manuel Lanzini, 9 Michail Antonio, 20 Jarrod Bowen
Substitutes: 22 Saïd Benrahma, 50 Harrison Ashby
