JUST A BUS STOP IN HOUNSLOW
West Ham 0 Brentford 2
A rather quaint idea of subsisting in the Premier League was that you won your home games and did all you could to grab an away point here and there throughout the opening months. The Covid and games behind closed doors restricted the assumptions about away points being harder to gain than home ones. This followed on from Leicester City winning the league in 2015-16 with a possession percentage of barely 30. So the obvious in football has become a little more subtle.
Brentford FC are a case in point. This is a team that have not been in the top flight of English football since 1947, when their war decimated side slid away from the first English league, not to return for nearly three-quarters of a century. Now they are back, and we’re recently the first team in Europe to win at Manchester City’s Etihad since Tottenham Hotspur [back in April?].
The long-haired and youthful Thomas Frank, the manager who shamelessly chews gun with his mouth open, is the man who has managed the West London side to its current standing. This side completed the double over David Moyes’ seventh finishing Hammers in 2021-22.
This evening follows on swiftly from West Ham’s 1-3 reverse at the Emirates on Boxing Day, possibly a little too swiftly for comfort. Nevertheless it’s West Ham who are first to the ball for the opening fifteen minutes, with Declan Rice hitting the outside of the post from 25 yards and then a Dawson header skidding a foot wide from a Bowen corner. After Scamacca shoots straight at Raya from a good position, Brentford take the lead. Mathias Jensen’s long throw is headed on by Ethan Pinnock to Nørgaard, whose instinctive volley is superbly saved by Fabianski only for Ivan Toney to smartly tuck away the rebound.
Two minutes from the end of the first half, Cresswell is caught on the wrong foot as Josh Dasilva chases a long clearance, and his acceleration and a smart finish sees the Bees go in for the half time break with a two goal lead.
The second half seems an excellent a opportunity to regroup and fight for a point, but Hammers are flat-footed by a well-organised and unforgiving Brentford defence, and the unthinkable has to be considered, Hammers and the possibility of spending the last day of the year in the bottom three.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 33 Emerson, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 15 Craig Dawson, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 22 Saïd Benrahma, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 7 Gianluca Scamacca, 11 Lucas Paquetá, 20 Jarrod Bowen
Substitutes: 9 Michail Antonio, 28 Tomas Souček
