THE GOOD IN GOODISON
Everton 1 West Ham 3
With the established joy of breaking a run of five successive Premier League defeats against Brentford on Monday, Hammers now face the only side to beat them at home in the league this season who are not in the top four.
Everton bring their own talismanic nightmares with a ten point deduction earlier in the season for financial irregularities, which this week has been reduced to a penalty of just six points. With their new stadium due for completion halfway through next season, relegation is a word few connected with the club are ready to hear uttered.
Everton were last relegated from the top flight in 1950-51, but this season the club has constantly flirted with the drop, despite the supposedly secure stewardship of Sean Dyche. As Liverpool’s ‘other half’ of the city, they have still to win anything this century, but have a long tradition of success to draw on.
Hammers start quite brightly in the game, but an opening early goal eludes them, and now the focus shifts to Everton on the award of a 43rd minute penalty after a uncontested handball in the area by Kurt Zouma. Beto, in the temporary guise of first choice striker, puts it too close to Areola’s left, and the status quo is unblemished at the break.
Early in the second half Beto gets a chance to redeem himself when a fabulous cross from James Garner, taking time off from the Rockford Files, picks him out in space in the penalty area, from where he puts Everton ahead. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, scorer of the only goal at London Stadium earlier in the season, must be shaking his head in disbelief after failing to find the back of the net in twenty successive games.
Six minutes later and West Ham are level, Zouma heading the ball past Pickford from a James Ward-Prowse corner. Assistisis. The status quo returns. It looks at this stage that this is one of those games destined to only generate a point each to two clubs who are after so much more, for vastly different reasons.
Things start to get interesting once the ninety minutes are up, and rather than settle for the point, Souček heads out to the far post to make a delicious volleyed contact with the loose ball to put the Hammers in front. The timing and technique echoes the finesse of Paolo Di Canio’s strike against Wimbledon 24 years ago.
Now Álvarez breaks through unleashed on the counter virtually straight from Everton’s next attack, advancing towards Pickford before chipping the ball over him in a way any world expert striker would have been proud to have claimed. Good for the goal difference and excellent for turning this evening into a second successive PL, the two goal victory allows for less last minute heart rumblings, and more of a relaxed atmosphere in preparation for the Europa League first leg away fixture with SC Freiburg in Germany next Thursday.
23 Alphonse Areola, 4 Kurt Zouma (captain), 5 Vladimir Coufal, 33 Emerson, 15 Konstantinos Mavropanos, 7 James Ward-Prowse, 10 Lucas Paquetá, 19 Edson Álvarez, 28 Tomas Souček, 14 Mohammed Kudus, 20 Jarrod Bowen
Substitutes: 11 Kalvin Phillips, 9 Michail Antonio, 2 Ben Johnson, Angelo Ogbonna
Goalscorers: Kurt Zouma (62), Souček (90 + 1), Álvarez (90 + 5)
