TANGLED UP IN BLUE
West Ham 1 Everton 1
Saturday 18th January 2020
Darren Randolph’s appearance for his second West Ham career debut makes it four different goalkeepers who have started for the Hammers this season. That’s a slightly unsettling statistic for what is proving to be a more than unsettling season. Moyes’ disappointment at the Sheffield United result where he thought Snodgrass had grabbed a deserved late equaliser proved to be another accurate but crippling VAR decision. Is it a blip or the real thing? This season has had Hammers’ fans thinking that way.
Everton’s last visit here saw them well beaten with two goals from Manuel Lanzini. His appearance this afternoon is a welcome eleventh from a barren season that has provided neither goals nor anything like the number of assists accrued in previous campaigns. Everton have Carlo Ancelotti in the manager’s seat, and he’s won three of his last four games in charge.
Snodgrass is putting in a decent shift and is the first to test Pickford with a shot from the edge of the area. West Ham look very different under Moyes: less organised but more unpredictable. As we’ve seen this season, the away teams tend to have done a job on West Ham in terms of their research, and six losses against three wins tells that story most eloquently. The two early season wins and the Bournemouth result on New Year’s Day are slim home pickings from a thin season.
Snodgrass is put through by Declan Rice, and he puts the chance away, though the lack of fight by the Everton defence suggests it’s a clear offside. VAR is interested however, and for a moment we wonder if this could be a balancing up moment for what happened a week ago… It’s closer than I thought at the time, but still a country mile. A few minutes later Noble find Heller closing in from the right, but he shoots straight at Pickford who blocks the shot competently. I start wondering when it was that West Ham last had a striker who could raise your hopes with just the keeper to beat. No, there haven’t been that many. You’d need a Messi or a Ronaldo, and even those two have been known to disappoint.
Everton are pretty clueless for a team that have won three out of four, and when they give the ball away for a third time, Snodgrass feeds Lanzini, whose cross falls just behind Haller’s run… Haller seems to inevitably arrive too late or too early. You get the feeling that when he starts getting it right, he’ll be scoring goals by the hatful. Fabian Delph is impressing, playing out of defence to construct a run of play that sees Everton settling. Raising his and Everton’s game, he goes in heavily on Lanzini, and from Snodgrass’s curling free kick, Issa Diop squeezes in behind the Everton defence to grab the first goal, West Ham’s first headed effort of the season in mid-January, Diop celebrating with the customary hanging tongue smile.
West Ham are unable to control the game for the last five first half minutes to take the lead to the changing room, but before this predictable event occurs, I make a study of David Moyes. Everton probably represent the best years of his career in terms of achievements, with consistent top half finishes, and the comforting knowledge that Manchester United were keeping him on ice to replace Alex Ferguson whenever he finally saw fit to retire. Now he’s just here to clear up Pellegrini’s expensive mess. Everton have a late corner which is flicked on by Mason Holgate to Dominic Calvert-Lewin who steers the ball past Randolph with a deft header. It seems a little undeserved, and Hammers almost answer with a second as Zabaleta’s cross finds the head of Fornals, but Pickford is equal to it with a stunning left hand reaction save.
Everton start the second half marginally better that West Ham, but squander three excellent opportunities in the first ten minutes. A point suddenly looks like it might be a decent part of the spoils to take away from this. Jason Pickford is more than able to deal with all that a Hammers can chuck at him this time round, and claws away a great deflected effort from Snodgrass later on. Ajeti has a VAR potential red to ward off after he appears to deliberately head-butt Holgate, who might have fooled the referee if he hadn’t been so keen to collapse like he’d just been shot.
Eventually both sides resign themselves to the compromise salary from what has been a frustrating afternoon. Moyes has to face the other Merseyside team twice in the next five games. Even a smile would be something from those two fixtures.
35 Darren Randolph, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 5 Pablo Zabaleta, 23 Issa Diop, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 16 Mark Noble (captain), 41 Declan Rice, 10 Manuel Lanzini, 11 Robert Snodgrass, 22 Sébastien Haller, 18 Pablo Fornals
Substitutes: 26 Arthur Masuaku, 27 Albian Ajeti
Scorer: 23 Issa Diop
