NO DUALS AT THE PALACE
Crystal Palace 4 West Ham 3
This is one of those games where the fickle hand of fate initially appears to West Ham early on in the game as a good luck charm. The fact that it occurs inside the first ten minutes of the game provides an additional mischievous blessing to the spirits.
Not unlike the last away game at Bournemouth, the melee after an early corner presents a shooting opportunity to Tomas Souček, who blasts home for the first time in 26 games from just inside the area. Hammers ahead, two of the greatest words you could ever want to see united inside a sentence.
Oh, false Dawn, how often she’ll let you down. Six minutes later Palace forge a break away from another sustained Hammers’ attack, and stretched wide on the right, Jordan Ayew shoots from the edge of the area past Fabianski to equalise. More irritatingly, the despairing and late attempt to tackle Ayew from Zouma sees him carried off with an ankle injury that will keep him out of the side for the rest of the season. Great.
Just five minutes later and Palace have turned it around with another breakaway scattering the Hammers’ back line into a ferreting frenzy that allows Zaha a tap in on the line that he almost sidefoots wide, but just manages to keep on course for the back of the net. False Dawn and her fickle-fated hand.
Ten minutes later and it’s three, but this goal is avoidable. Nayef Aguerd, another player today flattering in the pursuit of deception, lays a square ball to Souček, who, having chased back, finds himself trapped in the vacated Zouma position, unable to bypass the advancing Schlupp, and the Palace midfielder effortlessly rolls the ball past Fabianski.
Thankfully Souček makes an inroaded assist shortly afterwards, craning his neck on the edge of the six yard box from Cresswell’s corner to flick the ball on towards the far post where Antonio meets in gleefully, returning some respect to the score line, and with it the distant hope of an equaliser early in the second half. Five goals by half time, the same number in the whole of the corresponding fixture from last season.
The second half doesn’t get any better unfortunately, Eze converting a penalty awarded after the subtlest of arm brushes with Aguerd forces him into a theatrical full length dive. The VAR official is unfortunately in the loo when all of this happens, so the award stands and the two goal margin is restored.
All that remains in the match is for West Ham to pull back a 72nd minute goal from a corner, their third scoring set piece of the afternoon, with Souček again providing the flick on assist, this time for Aguerd to head home at the far post. This time there is a theatrical VAR check for a hidden offside which fades away as permanently as Hammers’ inability to rescue a point from this disappointing outing to South London. Roy Hodgson has recorded his fourth win out of six after returning to the Palace Hot Seat, and the red and blues record their first top flight double over the Hammers for some time.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 33 Emerson, 4 Kurt Zouma, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 23 Thilo Kehrer, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 11 Lucas Paquetá, 8 Pablo Fornals, 28 Tomas Souček, 9 Michail Antonio, 20 Jarrod Bowen
Substitutes: 22 Saïd Benrahma, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 14 Maxwell Cornet, 18 Danny Ings
Goalscorers: Tomas Souček, Lucas Paquetá, Nayef Aguerd
