NO CREAK FOR DAWSON
West Ham 1 Burnley 0
There are always abberations, even in a West Ham season. Currently the recent Chelsea and Manchester United games are deserving of that description, but everything else in the last three months still looks sweet.
Burnley won at London Stadium back in July 2020, and though they have been in the bottom five for most of this season, they still rarely concede goals away from home. Sean Dyche is currently the longest serving manager in the Premier League, and a decent man with no front, managing his team well with limited funds.
I have fond memories of Burnley as a fan, as they were the first side I ever saw the Hammers beat, 3-1, back in October 1970, when Geoff Hurst scored his last ever hat-trick in West Ham colours, and a young 17 year old winger Johnny Ayris made his debut for the side. This afternoon is West Ham’s first home game of 2021, and they’ve yet to concede a goal this year in 270 minutes of away game play, so things are pretty plum. But then again, this is a very odd season.
Craig Dawson, on loan from Watford, has played each one of those 270 no goal conceding minutes, and has scored one at the other end, too. That’s quite a climb from the position of simple squad player reserve, and one he’s not about to surrender. To think that Hammers were after Burnley’s restless defender James Tarkowski in the close season, but he wanted away and to play in a different kit – West Ham weren’t prepared to change their first team colours to accommodate him. And here he is, 16th with 16 points to West Ham’s 10th with 26. This is the Premier League, Jim, but not as you’d like to know it.
The getting back to fitness on the job Michail Antonio pokes Hammers ahead on nine minutes from Fornals’ curling cross that evades four defenders on its way to him. Dawson is kicking, Benrahma is dribbling and Ogbonna is hitting the bar, arriving late at the far post. Burnley find the back of the net in a rare attack, but it’s a VAR play-on, in spite of Wood’s clear offside position.
The only question that remains unanswered is, can Burnley score in the second half? I can answer that one for you now. No, they can’t. Jay Rodriguez comes on for the visitors with twenty minutes to go. Remember, he’s the one who scored the only goal of the game the last time the teams met here. Yes, he comes very close with six minutes to go, but even then Yarmolenko could and should have scored ninety seconds later. Maybe if it mattered he would have. The two new boys Frederick Alves and Mipo Odubeko stay on the bench, and are not needed for now. Three more points and still no goals conceded in 2021.
I wonder momentarily if there’s some young kid somewhere watching West Ham for the first time, live on his parents’ telly, armed now with a story to write up somewhere fifty years from now. This is clearly a formidable West Ham side, with another home game on Tuesday, and if they win that, they could be sixth by the end of the evening. Their key game is the Liverpool fixture at the end of the month. Fans are already talking about that being another home win. Something must be going right.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 15 Craig Dawson, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 41 Declan Rice, 9 Saïd Benrahma, 18 Pablo Fornals, 28 Tomas Soucek, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 30 Michail Antonio
Substitutes: 10 Manuel Lanzini, 7 Andriy Yarmolenko
Scorer: 30 Michail Antonio
