A GAME OF TWO HALVES, AND TWO THOUSAND FANS
West Ham 1 Manchester United 3
‘If I knew then what I know now,’ is a well known Country Music classic, recorded by Charlie Rich in 1965 from his ‘That’s Rich’ RCA album, in all likelihood before you were born. I mention this because this lyric described how I was feeling at the end of this bizarre game that welcomed 2000 Hammers’ fans back into London Stadium for the first time since the fully attended game against Southampton back in February 2020.
This when you look at it was a game in which West Ham should have scored three, possibly four goals without reply, by half-time. The actuality was that they managed just the one, a tap in at the far post by Tomas Soucek from Declan Rice’s brilliant headed assist six minutes before half time. Sebastien Haller was through on goal barely a minute later, but trod on the ball when he was squeezing the trigger to make it 2-0. Ten minutes earlier Pablo Fornals had placed a delicious connect wide of Henderson, in goal for the absent de Gea, but agonisingly against the inside of the post with the goal gaping. Jarrod Bowen had hit the back of the net early in the game only to be brought back for having originally collected the through ball in an offside position.
In the second half Ole Gunnar Solskjaer brought on Fernandes and Rashford, but Hammers continued to lay siege to Manchester United’s goal, and then Bowen and Haller came close again. Then, in a further West Ham break, a loose ball was played forward into space for Bowen. Henderson raced off his line and his clearance, whilst seemingly going out of play found Fernandes, who laid it off to Pogba, and the Frenchman struck an irritatingly exquisite shot from twenty-five yards that fizzed past Fabianski and into the corner of the net. There is naturally for the Hammers no way currently for VAR to check if a high ball along the line has crept out of play, so the ‘goal’ was given, and the gates were open for a Manchester United onslaught that yielded another two.
I also mentioned the song I mentioned earlier because Charlie Rich also released a top ten single entitled ‘Behind Closed Doors’ back in 1974 which, ironically, was a place where this game was not played. Odd though that players should get nervous in front of such a relatively small crowd in a stadium that will (eventually) seat 66,000. But that was how it happened. West Ham’s run of three wins came to an end, and Manchester United’s away run of eight successive wins stretched to nine.
Why was this? A certain amount of luck, some inspired substitutions by Solskjaer and the continuing absence of a fully fit Michail Antonio, who clearly overdid it with the 45 minute shift he put in against Aston Villa here on Monday. There’s also the small issue of none of David Moyes’ teams ever having beaten Manchester United since he left them by mutual dissent. One thing was for sure though, it wasn’t the kit, salvaged as it must have been from some A-Ha video shoot from the 1980s.
Despite all of this, I wasn’t thinking of Charlie Rich on my way to the game, and hadn’t given him a second thought even when Paul Pogba’s shot beat Fabianski, but when Greenwood hit a brilliant second less than three minutes later, and then Rashford hit a third after being put through by Juan Mata, the third substitute, and this after hitting the post a couple of minutes earlier, the Charlie Rich song suggested itself to me. That might make me Mr. Hindsight, I accept that, but FFS, how is it suddenly 1-3 after all that? A further misery was to reveal itself later that evening, when the boffs at Match of the Day proved with a technology that VAR doesn’t have that the first goal should have been disallowed as Henderson’s clearance clearly went out of play before reaching Fernandes. Perhaps Charlie Rich recorded ‘Stockley Park’ but I’m not going to google it. I would get no satisfaction, even if it turns out he had.
With Manchester United in a city where Tier 3 is a life of lockdown that will probably prevent them playing in front of even two thousand of their fans, or friends of their corporate sponsors, it proved a decent day out, and an observation that paying fans baying you on to score more goals than the side you are playing may well prove an overrated dream. After all, they’ve now won nine in a row without any travelling fans to beguile the otherwise straightforward talents of the players on their bench. And they have won the last five after going behind, that’s what’s so weird. And I did know that then before I knew this now.
Yes, profligacy is not an art form, though it could be habit-forming. West Ham’s lesson, if learned comprehensively, could still prove useful in this fascinating and curiously unpredictable developing season.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 4 Fabian Balbuena, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 41 Declan Rice (c), 28 Tomas Soucek, 26 Arthur Masuaku, 18 Pablo Fornals 20 Jarrod Bowen, 22 Sébastien Haller
Substitutes: 9 Saïd Benrahma, 10 Manuel Lanzini, 31 Ben Johnson
Scorer: Tomas Soucek
