NUN ON TARGET
Fulham 0 West Ham 1
So they are actually saying it now. That’s the people who matter. If West Ham lose this afternoon then David Moyes will be sacked and Brendan Rodgers, freshly wrapped in the sackcloth and ashes of Leicester City FC, will be appointed manager before Monday. This is when I start believing that West Ham will in all likelihood win this game. Fulham have lost three matches on the trot since their 3-1 FA Cup quarter-final implosion at Old Trafford (a few days after West Ham’s) and are without eight game banned Aleksandar Mitrovic and the concentrated focus of beleaguered manager Marco Silva.
Things have got so desperate at West Ham that David Moyes has actually made the changes that everyone has been screaming for him to make in the last two months. Yes, he is actually going to start Antonio together with Ings. He has dropped Aguerd, Emerson and Kehrer. and reinstated the ‘old boys’ Cresswell, Ogbonna and Coufal. Whilst I am swamped with the certainty that the Ings and Antonio ‘experiment’ will not work, I am secretly delighted with the return of the defensive old guard from last season. Can West Ham manage a clean sheet? More significantly, are they likely to find the back of the net away from home in a season where they have only won once on their Premier League travels? The scorer on that occasion at Aston Villa was Pablo Fornals, who also starts this afternoon.
I am actually in the Fulham end for this game, having secured myself a ticket via friends of friends, who have ensured that I am sitting amongst the most vocal Fulham supporters ‘down by the river.’ Fulham are imploding and West Ham have imploded. It’s this afternoon’s local implosion derby.
Halfway through the first half, Coufal fashions a dazzling run down the right, picking up Bowen, from a deflection, who has crept into the area unnoticed and onside, and his square pass – shot? – pass back? – is clipped neatly into the corner of his own net by Harrison Reed, the proud owner of Fulham’s as yet unretired number 6 shirt. Very fashionable. West Ham are ahead, despite having no shots on target in the game so far.
At the other end Antonee Robinson fires in a shot from just outside the area which clears Fabianski’s crossbar by the width of one of the cardboard fans left optimistically on Fulham fans’ seats before today’s game.
Fulham finally manage their first shot on target in the game after an hour’s play, Pereira’s shot easily fielded by Fabianski, as is a similar effort by him a few minutes later. As the game but not its quality advances, West Ham create their second opportunity of the match, Bowen chipping substitute Danny Ings through, but the journeyman’s chip is well fielded by Bernd Leno. Benrahma gets in on the act towards the end of the game, his curved long distance effort just wide.
The final chance of the game comes to substitute Maxwell Cornet after a disastrous slip by Ream that lets him in one on one with Leno, but his options of squaring to Benrahma in front of the empty net, or chipping the Fulham keeper, are traded in for shooting straight at Leno, who appears to laugh rather cruelly as he beats the ball away to safety. It does make you wonder about poor Mr. Cornet. A perfectly good equalising goal cheated away from him by Édouard Mendy at Stamford Bridge back in September, and now this.
But Brendan Rodgers will have to change channels for now. David Moyes’ team are now three points clear of the bottom three with a game in hand. Pity it’s against Arsenal.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 4 Kurt Zouma, 8 Pablo Fornals, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 28 Tomas Souček, 9 Michail Antonio, 18 Danny Ings, 20 Jarrod Bowen
Substitutes: 12 Flynn Downes, 22 Saïd Benrahma, 14 Maxwell Cornet
Goalscorer: Harrison Reed (own goal)
