ANTONIO ANTONIO ANTONIO

One of West Ham’s most memorable achievements in last season’s Pandemic Premier League was the 3-0 thrashing of Leicester City at the Imposing Title Power Stadium. Just a couple of weeks earlier Brendan Rodgers’ slick footy outfit had demolished Champions to be Manchester City 6-2. But on that Sunday, newly equipped with debutant Vladimir Coufal (who placed Jamie Vardy delicately in his pocket from the first minute of the game) Hammers squashed the midlands’ outfit out on their own manicured turf.

Tonight is the first fully crowd stacked game at London’s London Stadium for eighteen months, and the deafening cheers of the fans in the early minutes suggest we might have a game on our hands.

Leicester’s light turquoise kit is easy on the eye, as are their early neat passes, as the ball shoots off the moist east London turf under the sparkling floodlights. They say Chelsea’s Zouma might soon be headed across town. The clubs have agreed the fee, but Zouma wants an unspeakable personal salary that will probably scupper the deal, the greedy fartleg race lapper. Then there’s Jesse Lingard and his ten minute appearance for Manchester United in their drab 1-1 draw at Southampton yesterday. I think, as the transfer window slides shut, that he might consider that slight pay cut to move to east London permanently, don’t you? We shall see.

Fornals’ best goal last season was arguably the breakaway strike that made it 2-0 away at Leicester. Today he scores an even better effort with a one touch finish from Benrahma’s sublime pass to deflect the ball deliciously into the bottom corner past Schmeichel like a long pot at the Crucible.

Then comes the event that will take the game further away from Leicester, as Ayoze Pérez performs a blow across Fornals’ midriff as delicate as the touch the Spaniard dispatched his opportunity with just fifteen minutes earlier. Indeed the subtlety of the challenge is such that Michael Oliver misses it in real time, and it’s only when Fornals fails to raise himself from the floor for a good minute after the challenge that the play is brought back to the moment for a VAR investigation. After a long hard look at the screen, Oliver completes the triumvirate of delicate touches with the deft production of the red card from his back pocket. Noticeably no massive complaints from Rodgers, just a little bafflement at why the foul might have been felt worthwhile.

In the second half Leicester manage to regroup for ten minutes with the one man disadvantage, but then Caglar Soyuncu’s poor back pass lets in Antonio who sets up Benrahma for a tap in to make it two. City rally briefly when Youri Tielemans finishes off a decent breakaway move, but then Michail Antonio emerges from the shadows to hit a third, and becomes West Ham’s top Premier League goalscorer, eclipsing the great Paolo Di Canio by one, to go to 48 PL goals, and the two cup efforts makes it a round West Ham career 50. He moves to the tunnel where he is handed a cardboard cut out of himself to pirouette in a bizarre dance with, climaxing in a mirror celebration kiss. Thankfully there is no VAR check. Four minutes later Antonio has a fourth, engineering a move from the edge of the six yard box to squeeze the ball past Schmeichel and to take West Ham to the top of the Premier League above Chelsea, Liverpool and Brighton.

Delicious.

1 Lucasz Fabianski, 15 Craig Dawson, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 41 Declan Rice (Captain), 28 Tomas Souček, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 8 Pablo Fornals, 22 Said Benrahma, 9 Michail Antonio

Substitutes: 7 Andriy Yarmolenko, 16 Mark Noble

Scorers: Pablo Fornals, Saïd Benrahma, Michail Antonio (2)