MAGNIFICENT SEVENTH
West Ham 0 Everton 1
Do you ever wonder whether there is a higher power controlling events in your football team’s favour? Not if you’re a West Ham fan you don’t. Players returning from injury, new managers’ first games, manager-less teams, strikers on their longest run without a goal for six seasons, relegated clubs who’ve endured seven successive defeats… All of this spells a hiding for any West Ham team, even the occasional ambitious ones.
Even so, nothing of substance sticks out in the Everton side West Ham are facing this afternoon. Everton recently lost 2-1 at home to Aston Villa, but then won 1-0 away at Arsenal. What can you conclude? Nothing. Leicester’s unexpected 4-2 defeat at home to Newcastle has made Hammers’ fans realise that this is the team they might replace in the top four, especially as Leicester play Chelsea in a week and a half’s time. But of course West Ham must win this afternoon for any of that to be worth discussing.
This afternoon’s opponents are the club that David Moyes established his reputation at, so strong was it at Goodison that Alex Ferguson was said to have been grooming Moyes as his replacement at Manchester United for three years, before retiring. But that didn’t work out. Patience is in limited supply in football these days, unlike when Ferguson joined United from Aberdeen back in the 1980s.
And that ole West Ham Magic can’t resist trying its boots on this afternoon. The pre-match hype about Declan Rice returning to the side he last played for when they weren’t losing again to Newcastle, proves to be just that. Aaron Cresswell ends up donning the captain’s armband in Mark Noble’s continued absence, and a nervous hundred or so club employees clutch their team sheets and water bottles as Everton record a slew of corners which West Ham defend desperately, but successfully. Everton’s shape is good and they appear well briefed. Lingard and Antonio, the impact twins, are shut out.
After twenty-four minutes, Everton take the lead. West Ham have begun the big push after twenty minutes of being under the cosh and get exposed at the back. Dominic Calvert-Lewin slips in to slot Ben Godfrey’s perfect through ball neatly past Fabianski.
I have been this way before, dating back to Geoff Hurst’s 1971 penalty against Gordon Banks, Steven Gerrard’s 91st minute equaliser for Liverpool in the 2006 FA Cup Final, and the 3-1 away defeat against, yes, Everton, in May 1986, stealing from us a last gasp second-placed finish. Something in me is silently shaking its head at the thought that there might be any goals for West Ham in this game.
Antonio and Lingard are tightly marked. A headed opportunity at the far post for Benrahma that he can’t keep down is wasted. Then a blistering shot from Coufal comes off the post into the path of first half substitute Bowen, who is in the right place but can’t tuck it away.
Everton sit on their lead and defend well, if with a little luck. The referee is unaccountably lenient on some pretty rough tackling from the Everton strong men. So if everything happens for a reason, what’s going on here?
Just when it looked like the fickle finger of fate was beckoning us over lasciviously, so it is that we now find ourselves looking at the hand.
It was an ill-judged turd-polishing decision by those responsible for Everton’s 2002-03 end of season DVD to call it ‘The Magnificent Seventh’. For a side that last won the league in 1987 and the FA Cup in 1995, these were still recent enough trophy events in the club’s history to not feel it necessary to big up morsels. At least that was my thought on the way to this game, possibly my last journey there with a stadium parking space before fans return for the Southampton fixture in a fortnight.
Now I am free to reflect that seventh may well be all we have to look forward to achieving if we fail to get back to winning ways before the season is over.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 23 Issa Diop, 15 Craig Dawson, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 28 Tomas Souček, 9 Saïd Benrahma,10 Manuel Lanzini, 18 Pablo Fornals, 11 Jesse Lingard, 30 Michail Antonio
Substitutes: 20 Jarrod Bowen, 24 Ryan Fredericks, 7 Andriy Yarmolenko
