LAST GAME BEFORE LOCKDOWN
Arsenal 1 West Ham United 0
Saturday 7th March 2020
People are beginning to realise that something is changing in the world that has nothing to do with football, though it may well affect it. The COVID-19 virus first appeared in Wuhan City, China, in late December 2019. Last Tuesday cases have begun to emerge in Spain, but the World Health Organisation have yet to declare it a pandemic. Nevertheless we have now seen the first person to die of it on English soil, a seventy year old woman from Reading, just two days ago.
After West Ham United’s superb 3-1 demolition of Southampton last weekend which has lifted the side clear of the relegation zone and inspired some new-found confidence in David Moyes’ men, a visit to the mercurial Arsenal may just be what is needed. Arsenal’s ragged home form which saw them lose all three games in December to Brighton, Manchester City and Chelsea, has been reversed by recent victories over Newcastle United and Everton, but the side haven’t won away since December – we won’t point out who that was against.
The Hammers have lost their last five away games, but the last of these was a narrow 2-3 reverse at Anfield, with Lukasz Fabianski making two errors that gifted goals to the reds, possibly his first such mistakes for the side, so there is a welling up of enthusiasm when they take to the field. There are 60,335 fans crammed into the Emirates for the game, and the fans fell silent as early as the second minute when Jarrod Bowen turned well only to see his well-aimed left foot shot, that almost beat Leno, spin away for a corner off the foot of the post. Eight minutes later Michail Antonio burst through on the right after a brilliant one-two with Pablo Fornals that gave him a clear shot on goal, only to suddenly turn provider instead of executioner, laying the ball behind the too-swiftly advancing Sébastien Haller, from where it was cleared with relief by Nicolas Pepe who had made good ground into a saving cover position for Arsenal.
West Ham continued to push forward throughout the first half, breaking confidently, and eighteen minutes in Mark Noble’s slide rule short pass found Haller with a genuine goal chance that disappeared as soon as it had arrived after a heavy first touch. Sokratis hit the top of the bar with a header as Arsenal began to settle. Six minutes from half-time a Mark Noble corner found Issa Diop, whose header was turned inches wide by Antonio just a yard out from goal. These four gilt-edged opportunities in the first half suggested a fate that was to prevail.
Arsenal improved in the second half and Fabianki saved well from Nketiah’s low effort seven minutes after the restart, but two minutes later Cresswell’s cross was flicked on by Haller only for Leno to deny Antonio’s header with an acrobatic save. Hammers continued to press forward and Bowen stretched Leno with a powerful low shot, but twelve minutes from time a blocked shot spun out to Mezut Özil whose header was dispatched by Alexandre Lacazette, looking a good two feet offside. Referee Martin Atkinson immediately disallowed the goal as Sian Massey-Ellis’s flag had been immediately raised, but the good VAR people in Stockton Park had other ideas, eventually, after a few seconds short of three minutes. There is something about a goal awarded after this kind of delay, especially one which looked irregular to the naked eye, that provides a metaphorical winding punch to the gut of the side that concede it. It was proved with the necessary technology that Ogbonna had indeed played Özil onside by a couple of inches, but the VAR award still felt somehow more like a theft than an act of justice.
Pulling their socks up, Hammers returned to battle, determined that this mishap should not shape the eventual outcome of the game, and seven minutes from time Bowen found Haller in the area with an impossibly precise pass that Haller this time struck perfectly only to be denied by another expert reflex save from Leno. It would have been a richly deserved finish for Moyes’ side who had battled well with six direct efforts on goal to Arsenal’s two over the ninety minutes, despite having just 39% possession.
Other results over the weekend proved less harsh than the events of the match and Hammers were to preserve their position outside of the relegation zone, albeit narrowly on goal difference above Watford and Bournemouth.
Looking back at this report at the end of April, 53 days later from a very different football-free world, this game seems a lifetime away. The following weekend’s Premier League games were all postponed, and although we hear that West Ham began training yesterday, and that there may well be a recommencement of the league in early June, this season will not be completed by games played in front of stadiums heaving with expectant fans. The idea of completing the 2019/20 season with the remaining games played behind closed doors seems the only realistic solution. The French football season was suspended this week until September, this week will tell us whether the English ones will suffer the same fate.
And so West Ham lost a game that perhaps they should have won, a sentence that their fans will have read many times before, in different publications. It will in all likelihood be the last time it is written four days before the World Health Organisation’s declaration that we are officially in the grip of a world pandemic.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 52 Jeremy Ngakia, 23 Issa Diop, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 17 Jarrod Bowen, 16 Mark Noble (captain), 41 Declan Rice, 18 Pablo Fornals, 30 Michail Antonio, 22 Sebastien Haller
Substitutes: 11 Robert Snodgrass, 8 Felipe Anderson, 28 Tomas Soucek
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