SUPER LEAGUE TEAM NICK A WIN
West Ham 0 Chelsea 1
This was, on paper, even before the referee blew his whistle to start it, an enthralling prospect, a game of football where four plays five for the title of undisputed – after a fashion – 2021-22 Champions League play-off place team thing, kind of. A true six pointer opportunity for both sides.
So what went wrong?
Maybe nothing. West Ham were missing Antonio, Cresswell, Dawson, Masuaku and Rice. Chelsea were missing Kovačič. Hammers had come back from a two-nil deficit at Newcastle with only ten men, proving nothing is impossible even with only half of your best starting XI. But something else was missing this afternoon. The hope. That kick and rush freedom that Lingard has brought to the West Ham side in this odd, delicious season. It had somehow upped and left.
The game started slowly, unlike the way West Ham’s last four games had been conducted. The previous four fixtures had produced 21 goals, and Hammers had scored 11 of them. This game had all the constituent ennui of the morning after the night before. What has happened to Chelsea this season had a lot to do with that.
There is, of course, something beyond simple effort and talent that places an invisible handle on the way events proceed within any game. Chelsea in this one with their tall defensive frame and their cautious tappety tippety training ground outplay, are never going to excite their fans. Their new manager, the Toucan, has managed Mainz, Borussia Dortmund and Paris St Germain. He lost just 36 matches in 234 games at the last two clubs. As a coach he encourages precision and efficiency whereas his predecessor, the Junior Lamps, was looking to field a side to excite, entertain and hit the back of the net. The Toucan says his game should not be about goals. I’ve heard such an approach categorised on many occasions in football in this way, all with that rather irritating unspoken sense of superiority, as if it’s what football should be all about. A higher class, business model of effective football. In short, the Toucan is a spoiler. Not unlike the one English manager who has turned his Chelsea side over this season, and whose approach is well known by West Ham fans far and wide, Sam Allardyce. So, successful manager that he is, it’s predictable what’s going to happen this afternoon against the Toucan’s Chelsea side. The goalfests that Hammers fans have been enjoying, even in defeat, will have to wait another week. This afternoon West Ham are playing a team from the Super League with a Super League mentality… if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. And so we go off.
The first moment of genuine potential scoring excitement in the game occurs on 37 minutes. Werner is booked for fouling Lingard as he breaks away down the left and from the loanee’s free kick Tomas Soucek hits the ball towards the corner of the goal past Mendy. Before it can find its target, the goalbound effort strikes the Chelsea captain Azpilicueta on the thigh and arm as he blocks it, sending the ball wide of the post. A VAR investigation concludes after a lengthy check that it’s not handball. A key moment in the game, perhaps.
Chelsea then take the lead, against the run of play, in a neat move started and finished by the yellow-carded German, if we can call him that, Timo Werner, who tucks away Chilwell’s low cross from eight yards, two minutes before half time. It’s his first goal for two and a half months, and his subsequent goal celebrations have much of an air of disbelief about them. The replay shows that West Ham had seven outfield men in the box to Chelsea’s four, so that’s not great, and it’s a clear royal kick in the guts for the team who felt they might win this match going into it. Fabianski has been almost superfluous in the first 45 which he is clearly reflecting on as he picks the ball out of the net. The cliché of a goal before half-time being worth two isn’t as absurd is its false logic often suggests, and the Moyes crew looked decidedly sluggish as they slope off at the end of the first half.
Just like at St James Park though, West Ham are more lively at the beginning of the second half, winning free kicks and pushing men up to grab opportunities to prove why they are this season’s Premier League set piece kings. However it is Chelsea who come closest early on to scoring the second goal of the game when Fabianski tips Mason Mount’s brilliant goalbound effort onto the post, but Werner puts the ball wide with the goal gaping. Maybe it’ll be another three months before he scores again. Fornals hits in a decent effort from distance in response to up the stat count, but Mendy saves well. Then, on the hour, after Fredericks has had a goalbound effort blocked by Mount, Lingard hits a chip-come-shot over Mendy which beats the Chelsea keeper all ends up, but sadly also clears the far post by a few inches.
As West Ham began to take a pleasing stranglehold on the game in their search for an equaliser, Balbuena is involved in a challenge with Ben Chilwell, catching him in his follow through after clearing the ball down the right channel. Three minutes later, after a VAR call and a study of the video monitor by referee Chris Kavanagh, the Paraguayan defender is given a straight red. Hurrah. With a quarter of an hour to go the award of the card threatens to take any further serious interest out of the game. Is this VAR improving things for football? Hammers didn’t get the handball given early in the first half, don’t forget. West Ham have a ten man finish for the second week in succession, but they conclude the game on the attack. For the second week in succession though, they are to end a game wondering just how they lost it.
The Chelsea Toucan says, post match, “The boys are very, very happy in the dressing room, and they can be. Great performance and amazing result, I think a well-deserved win for us.” Although his English didn’t translate too well (there was no mention of ‘luck’ or ‘VAR’ which seems to have been working for his mercenary crew in abundance) his command of inappropriate clichés was in keeping with the smash and grab nature of the Blues’ win. Declan Rice, watching from the stands, may well be reflecting on the seven years he spent in the Chelsea youth system, only to then be rejected by them as a young teenager when it came down to winning a full contract. Would you want to go out with someone who had dumped you unceremoniously six years earlier? And would you be prepared to accept that they fancy you now you’ve got rid of the spots and have started sporting a cool slicked back hairdo? That outcome, should it be proposed, remains to be seen in the close season.
As for the five matches that remain, West Ham shouldn’t lose heart. Their run in to the end of the season is less challenging than Chelsea’s, so this still isn’t over, by any throw of the weird Premier League dice.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 4 Fabián Balbuena, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 23 Issa Diop, 31 Ben Johnson, 24 Ryan Fredericks, 16 Mark Noble (c), 18 Pablo Fornals, 28 Tomas Souček, 11 Jesse Lingard, 20 Jarrod Bowen
Substitutes: 9 Saïd Benrahma, 10 Manuel Lanzini, 31 Ben Johnson
