TWO GOAL PILLOW
West Ham 2 Leeds United 0
This game is something of a watershed tonight as all the other teams have played and got their points. We are now playing keepy-uppy. The defeat against Manchester City has got to become an island in a sea of victories, and there is no better way to set that up than by a win tonight against the Argentinian bucket sitter’s exquisite Leeds United.
For a man that still conducts his Premier League press conferences in Spanish, Marcelo Bielsa plays an international back four in front of a French goalkeeper, who speak a multitude of different languages, and will have to contend with West Ham’s anglicised chequered (see what I did there) cut and thrust.
The first seven minutes see Leeds within a whisker of the early lead that they secured in the reverse fixture in December. First a shot from Costa just beats Fabianski’s crossbar, then Roberts taps in after a goalmouth scramble, which is VARred away, and finally Bamford hits home a cross from Raphina, after the ball has just gone out of play by a couple of inches. I suppose, after all that, you’d have to conclude that the gods are wearing claret and blue tonight.
Benrahma starts tonight and begins to make inroads into the Leeds’ defence after twenty minutes, finding Lingard who slips into the area only to be felled by Ayling. After slipping into a brief debate with Rice, Lingard takes the ball and the penalty and, although Meslier guesses right, nets the rebound. Seven minutes later Antonio, holding the ball up wide on the right, wins a useful free kick after being impeded by Liam Cooper. West Ham are the league’s dead ball specialists, but Cresswell hits the free kick into the wall and secures a corner with a deflection off Ayling that wrong-foots the keeper, almost creeping in. From Cresswell’s corner, Craig Dawson spins away from his marker and heads home to give Hammers a useful two goal pillow. Dawson almost grabs a second in first half injury time from another Cresswell corner, but this time his powerful low header hits the foot of the post, and away from the danger zone.
The second half is filled with yet more intricate and breathtaking play by Leeds, after Bielsa brings on Alioski, Harrison and Rodrigo before the hour. Fornals has earlier hit the bar with a breathtakingly powerful shot six minutes in, but then Leeds are fearless in everything they do this season. Bamford misses a golden six yarder a quarter of an hour before the end, which would have set the 180 in the stadium up for a edge of the seat finish. Not to be. In the end West Ham win at a canter.
Hammers have now won 14/27 PL games this season, something they have never done before at this stage of any PL season. Indeed, in a whole 38 game PL season (11 games more) they have only ever won 16 three times – in 1998-99, 2005-06 and 2015-16. In 1985-86, though, when they finished third in the old first division, they won 26 games out of 42 – the approximate equivalent of 23 out of 38 – so they’d have to win another 9 of the remaining 11. Just offering the statto perspective, and reminding you just how good the boys of 1985-86 were. But then they had the Upton Park twelfth man.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 23 Issa Diop, 15 Craig Dawson, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 41 Declan Rice (c), 28 Tomas Souček, 18 Pablo Fornals, 9 Saïd Benrahma, 11 Jesse Lingard, 30 Michail Antonio
Substitutes: 20 Jarrod Bowen, 31 Ben Johnson
Scorers: 11 Jesse Lingard, 15 Craig Dawson
