LET THE TRAIN DIVIDE
Brighton & Hove Albion 4 West Ham 0
Danny Ings has already played at the Amex this season, scoring twice in Aston Villa’s 2-1 November victory, just before the Qatari World Cup. Somehow you get the feeling this might be a very different game to that one.
Bad news for Hammers is that, despite the departure of Graham Potter earlier in the season, this is probably the best Brighton side West Ham will have played in their evolving time in the Premier League, whilst the Hammers are having their worst top flight season away from home for decades.
Brighton don’t score in the first quarter of an hour, but they are playing some good football, and I am feeling nervous. This is incidentally my first visit to the Amex, and I was hoping by going that I might charm out some extreme good fortune (a first ever PL win v Brighton) or a little sympathy from the gods.
In the same way that the normally efficient Aguerd found a curse on everything he came into contact with at Old Trafford on Wednesday, the young and confident Ben Johnson, starting because of the unavailability of Coufal and Kehrer, is blindsided by the darting run of Kaoru Mitoma, and Bowen, sensing the danger, runs in to shield the striker’s path, clips him, the contact followed by the inevitable tree fall, and over-vigilant referee pointing to the spot. Any chance of the keeper coming to our rescue is compromised due to Fabianski sitting in a treatment room somewhere back in London, still nursing his bruised eye socket.
Now behind, West Ham unequivocally up the ante and start to knock a few passes together. At the other end Bowen finds himself in a position to make amends with a clear shooting chance, but his effort is too close to Jason Steele, who beats the ball away to safety. For the third match in a row, the Hammers’ fans wonder what Moyes might say in the dressing room to generate some of the wonder play their team was able to fashion from nothing back in 2021.
The away form reverts to type after the break, and Brighton strengthen their hold on the game, scoring from a corner after Johnson has left an unmarked Joël Veltman at the far post to stoop to head into the empty net. Moyes has brought on Fornals for West Ham’s best player of the first half, Saïd Benrahma, but Scamacca remains on the bench. Within a quarter of an hour the home side have a third, another bout of shoddy marking leaving Mitoma free at the far post to toe poke home. Well over a thousand of the away fans are on their way back to the station when the fourth hits the back of the net, a well-fashioned but unspectacular close range finish by Danny Welbeck. The late substitutions wander onto the pitch like masters of ceremonies at the circus, closing the comedy show with gentle warm up runs up and down the wings. The home ball boys see more of the ball in the last ten minutes than they do.
I haven’t seen a Hammers’ performance as poor as this since the last days of Manuel Pellegrini, and for all the optimists hoping that last weekend’s rout of Forest had signalled the beginning of something, this afternoon’s misery has confirmed that it was only a part time miracle, limping into the clearing, fashioning a temporary hope out of a more permanent despair.
13 Alphonse Ariola, 2 Ben Johnson, 3 Emerson, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 27 Nayef Aguerd, 28 Tomas Souček, 11 Lucas Paquetá, 18 Danny Ings, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 22 Saïd Benrahma,
Substitutes: 8 Pablo Fornals, 4 Kurt Zouma, 10 Manuel Lanzini, 12 Flynn Downes
