BRUTAL EFFICIENCY
West Ham 0 Burnley 1
Some things are better left unsaid, but let’s say them anyway.
Looking at the first three home games in the Behind Closed Doors zone, even the perceptive and thinking person’s Hammers’ fan would not have chalked up the Chelsea game for the only three-pointer. Even less likely would they have been to pick the Burnley game for a fixture that they would fail to score in, but that would be to ignore Burnley’s current form, second only to the champions. A win here would give them a double over the Hammers for the first time in 73 years. That was the line you didn’t want to hear, because it comes with a quality underlay that has ‘will happen’ running through it like a stick of rock.
As for Moyes’ team on the night, Yarmolenko starts, replacing Lanzini. It’s a commitment to attack, but a withdrawal of part of the chance engine room for the night. Sébastien Haller is finally fit enough to quash paranoid rumours that he has left the club, but for the moment he’s only out there to warm the bench. We will see him on the hour. This is more or less the team that has performed so well over the last two games, with Noble’s experience and Lanzini’s craft sacrificed for the youth and pace that Moyes prefers. More rumours abound that Noble will be taking one for the team and retiring at the end of the season so Rice can be offered the captaincy as an inducement to stay. Staying up will be the other essential variable to solve this conundrum.
West Ham start confidently enough but don’t have any of the penetration their last two performances suggested they might have tonight. Moyes’ Hammers teams in his second spell here have recorded a miserly 36% possession on average from game to game. Not exactly spectacular, but good to see that even this might be enough to keep us in the Premier League for another season.
Nick Pope, Burnley’s keeper, is a giant and current favourite to secure the ‘Golden Gloves’ award for 2020, having kept thirteen clean sheets this season. It may be fourteen in due course. The defence in front of him is also extraordinarily tall, so the high ball into the area won’t be yielding very much. Don’t be surprised to hear that tonight it’s going to be happening a lot. After just eight minutes, Burnley almost score, Erik Pieters screwing the ball over the bar from just inside the area. Then McNeil’s cross is headed wide by Vydra, from an even better position. Jarrod Bowen is hacked down on the left by Kevin Long. Sides quickly cotton on to the fact that this is the player they most need to trolley. Although it’s a dark compliment, it can’t help Bowen sleep very comfortably on the night after the match. After fifteen minutes West Ham finally create their first chance, but Soucek’s goalbound shot is blocked.
If you let your gaze drift out of focus so the players are just blobs, it would seem like the average body mass across the two sides would offer a ratio of about 3:2, with Burnley the 3. It’s thought that West Ham chose the claret and blue colours for their shirts over a century ago because they liked how Burnley and Aston Villa looked. So for tonight and for their last game of the season they will be pitched against the sides whose colours they copied. Does that mean anything in terms of their Premier League future? Ask in three weeks’ time.
Finally a gilt-edged chance is fashioned by Bowen who sets up Soucek to smash home, but Pope bashes out the point blank effort with a reflex stop. Bowen hits over the kind of corner that was troubling Chelsea’s defenders last week, but the Burnley defence are not remotely challenged. Moyes has spoken before the game about trying to iron out West Ham’s erratic streak. A win tonight is all that can do that.
I have started thinking to myself after the drinks break how we could relegate Norwich if we were to beat them this Saturday lunchtime. The fact that my mind is already wandering to Saturday is a worry. Ten minutes later events put some flesh on the bone of that thought when Burnley take the lead. One minute Jay Rodriguez is being castigated for wandering lazily into an offside position and the next he is getting on the end of a scintillating left wing cross from Charlie Taylor to head brilIiantly over Fabianski and in off the underside of the crossbar. It looked like an impossible snooker shot which he has pocketed by a deft twist of the neck and angular header. He has left Cresswell for dead this time, after Fredericks has been taken out by Taylor. Strangely enough, the closest West Ham will get to scoring in this game comes within the next sixty seconds when Ashley Westwood back passes Yarmolenko’s mistimed header directly into the path of Antonio who takes a touch before beating Pope with a curled shot, but his effort strikes the outside of the post and heads wide of the target.
The game has opened up, but now it’s Burnley who are dominating and Vydra should make it two with only Fabianski to beat, but he scuffs his effort wide. The only other moment of note before the half-time whistle is Yarmolenko’s shot that Pope sees late but still gets down in time to push away for a corner.
The second half looks at times as though it is being played underwater. Everything West Ham throw at Burnley seems to be aerial, which is never a problem for the Clarets’ defence. Bowen is stud-marked by James Tarkowski, the Burnley captain, who is yellow-carded. Cynical doesn’t coin it. Moyes seems to have forgotten that he still has three opportunities to make use of his reserve team of substitutes. Bowen’s next corner is reached by Soucek but his header is a lob over the bar rather than anything threatening. BT Sport’s commentator (I hear later) is calling him So-Check, Sky-style – are all the match researchers’ posts vacant?
Where is the goal we need? I can’t see one coming, even if we were to play for another two days.
West Ham’s weekend point against Newcastle has had its lustre compromised as Manchester City race into a three goal lead over them in just 55 minutes. The fertile imagination is an additional killer for all West Ham followers. Antonio tumbles in the area with Tarkowski who throws out a loose foot. On any other day it might be a penalty and a red card, but the rain must have got in Michael Oliver’s eyes. Good title for a song that. Finally Haller strips off his top and enters the arena to replace Yarmolenko, who has seemed a little bereft of ideas against the brutal efficiency of the Burnley defence. The effect is instant and with his first touch he finds Antonio and hits the return pass goalbound but Pope thrusts out a leg and sends it past the post. That was the moment. There will be no better one for him in the remaining half hour.
The few around me who should know better say that Dyche will spend the last ten minutes bringing on substitutes to waste time. He doesn’t. He knows the game is won, and he is better than that. Burnley are better than that, too. They have deserved the win and are a compact and well-organised side. We haven’t really hit the form of the previous two games, and to hit it against Watford and Aston Villa, the real six-pointer fixtures, would be more productive in every sense.
And so it’s Norwich City away on Saturday. This is a game Norwich must win to keep their Premier League ambitions alive. And Watford? They’re entertaining the fading Newcastle United. So who has the tougher challenge? But then again, they were saying that before the Chelsea game. West Bloody Ham. This is why we follow them.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 23 Issa Diop, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 24 Ryan Fredericks, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 7 Andriy Yarmolenko, 28 Tomas Soucek, 17 Jarrod Bowen, 18 Pablo Fornals, 30 Michail Antonio
Substitutes: 22 Sebastien Haller, 27 Albian Ajeti
