GALLING SEAGULLS
West Ham 0 Brighton & Hove Albion 2
It remains mildly infuriating to have to acknowledge that despite ten Premier League games against Brighton & Hove Albion, West Ham United have yet to beat them.
So what might make a claret and blue-blooded Hammer believe that this afternoon’s game would be any different to the previous ten? Hope over experience still operates in abundance in the West Ham United saloon of life.
But the narrative stubbornly remains the same. Benrahma shows a little of his class from the previous weekend in the first two minutes of the game with a brilliant dipping, curling effort that, on any other day, in any other fixture, would have kick started our season.
But… it’s a foot too high.
In under ten minutes Brighton have found their groove, and the Hammers’ machine begins to misfire. Rice looks pedestrian, predictable even, collecting the ball but immediately passing it on like it is an unwanted turd newly discovered on the beach of a previously loved holiday resort.
Kurt Zouma looks quizzical, not an easy look for the big Frenchman. Cresswell retrieves touchline headed balls, only to loft them forty feet into the air, after which they backward bounce into touch. Coufal hits hopeful crosses in from the right, which the Brighton keeper Sanchez uses for catching practice. Jarrod Bowen runs a lot, and Michail Antonio raises his arms in protest after fouls on him go unpunished.
Halfway through the first half Zouma, in an ill advised foray upfield, loses the ball and Brighton break, their neat passing move ending with MacAllister feeding Welbeck who is unceremoniously felled by newby Kehrer. The only question is whether the ball has reached the area before the defender’s minimal contact is made. VAR confirms the worst, and MacAllister slots home the penalty. Creator and executioner. As expected, this stops West Ham in their tracks; nothing surprising as they were barely in them. Half-time arrives like a welcome cup of tea. Perhaps a decent talk and a couple of substitutes can change things.
Hammers start the second period with a little more verve and energy, Souček particularly efficient heading forward, everything Rice has been over the last few years. But not today. Then, again just half way through the half, Brighton hit a second, Trossard slotting home the loose ball after Pascal Gross has hoodwinked Zouma. Yes Zouma. Two goal-punished mistakes. Again othe energy saps from the Hammered, and Brighton consolidate their lead with some fancy footwork. A stack of substitutions, and Hammers generate a few corners which Bowen takes and Souček and then Scamacca head over. Even if they’d had forty-four additional minutes, let alone the four that they get, West Ham would not have scored today. They have in fact precisely no goals for all their Premier League efforts this season, and will be bottom of the league when Manchester United beat Liverpool on Monday night. If you can cast your minds back to this time last season, this was where Arsenal were, a team who finally finished fifth. Just saying.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 4 Kurt Zouma, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 12 Thilo Kehrer, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 28 Tomas Souček, 8 Pablo Fornals, 9 Michail Antonio, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 22 Saïd Benrahma
Substitutes: 7 Gianluca Scamacca, 10 Manuel Lanzini, 14 Maxwel Cornet, 2 Ben Johnson
