LETSBY AVENUE
Norwich City 0 West Ham 4
This was the game two years ago that saw Michail Antonio score four goals in a live early kick-off game thrashing of the relegated canaries. And now we have an early kick-off game against the relegated canaries two years on. But then lightning never strikes twice in these football situations, does it? Especially just three days after your team has finally exited a competition that it has all season looked like winning. In miserable circumstances. No, lightning never strikes twice in football.
Except of course it does. West Ham with the faintest of scents of a second successive Europa League qualification, are soon ahead in this one. Bowen finds Benrahma out wide in more space than he should be occupying, and his direct shot somehow creeps under the diving body of Tim Krul, the replay indicating an unfortunate deflection past the Dutch keeper. Twenty minutes later another through ball from Bowen finds Antonio whose challenge with defender and keeper sees the ball run free for him to turn it in. His first goal in four months, and its relief as much as celebration.
Then, as the oranges and half-time talk beckon, Bowen is found wide by Lanzini, and his cross is thundered home from the edge of the area by Benrahma for his second of the game. It’s an enterprising first half performance that must have Norwich fans begging for next year’s fixtures to come out as soon as possible so they can get on with the task of trying to get back into the top flight. Yo-yo a-Lordy.
The second half, however, doesn’t go quite to plan, as Fabianski drops a cross which ex-Hammer Sam Byram turns home to get Norwich right back in the game. Except he doesn’t, or rather he does, but not without controlling the ball with his arm first, a detail that VAR picks up after a few to and fros with the ref from Stockley Park. Then at the other end, as often happens in the World of VAR, the ref picks out a subtle handball from the Norwich defence as Dawson heads wide from a Fornals corner. A penalty. So it’ll be Benrahma’s hat-trick, right? Nope, it looks like Lanzini will be taking the penalty, which he dispatches gently and expertly, sending Krul the wrong way.
But why not give it to Benrahma? The answer to this is ascertained a little later, and has something to do with Lanzini being ‘due one’ for something. Did he get booked for something that wasn’t his fault? Did he get dropped for a game that he should really have been playing in? Had Benrahma had a flutter on himself to score a hat-trick at 50-1 before the game? Whatever, Lanzini took the penalty and scored. This is no time for sentimentality. Or even worldwide confusion.
West Ham have just waved goodbye to Norwich City from the Premier League on their own ground for the second successive time in two years, to the tune of a four to nothing deficit. That, as Lou Christie surely said, is lightning striking again and again. Well once, at least.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 4 Kurt Zouma, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 41 Declan Rice (c), 15 Craig Dawson, 8 Pablo Fornals, 10 Manuel Lanzini, 22 Saïd Benrahma, 9 Michail Antonio, 20 Jarrod Bowen
Substitutes: 16 Mark Noble, 11 Nikola Vlasic, 7 Andriy Yarmolemko
Goalscorers: Saïd Benrahma (2), Michail Antonio, Manuel Lanzini
