MEMORABILIA CITY
West Ham United 3 Southampton 1
Saturday 29th February 2020
This season West Ham play Southampton at home on Saturday February 29th. They have only played three other games on this leap year day in the last seventy years, all of them as a top flight club, but none as a Premier League team. So whatever happens, it’ll be a first.
West Ham are eighteenth in the Premier League, in the relegation zone, and needing urgently to win especially as they only have recorded one success at home in 2020, the 4-0 New Year Day’s victory over Bournemouth. Curiously, just like their last home game on February 29th in 1992 (a 0-2 defeat at the hands of Everton), there are protests against the Board outside the ground before kick off, but although a few thousand congregate, it is a protest that for the moment seems consigned to outside. These affairs often seem to last as long as it takes the side to score a decent comfortable victory. The 1991-92 side were eventually relegated from the last ever First Division. Maybe today’s Premier League fixture will be one with a different ending.
Jarrod Bowen, West Ham’s £18m striker, makes his first start, his 54 goals for Hull City, 17 of them this season, promising great things. West Ham have lost five of their last six games, so something has to change. After just twelve minutes, Bowen justifies his price tag, with a powerful shot which James Ward-Prowse does well to block for a corner. Two minutes later Pablo Fornals pounces on a poor clearance and slides Bowen through for a deliciously expert finish to put the Hammers ahead on his debut. Moyes pre-match suggestion that ‘We can’t expect a lad from the Championship to be our saviour,’ appears to have been a psychological call to arms. Michail Antonio subsequently puts in a powerful cross after a brilliant overlap which Haller heads straight at McCarthy.
Southampton who haven’t really been in the game at all up to this point, snatch an equaliser on the half hour from Michael Obafemi, who expertly chips Ward-Prowse’s cross over Fabianski for an intelligently finish. This is a player who only ever seems to score away from home. Should have noticed that and marked him more effectively. A few minutes later Issa Diop sees his close in header from Cresswell’s corner hit a Southampton player as it sails narrowly wide, but Anthony Taylor awards a goal kick. Come on, VAR people at Stockley Park. That was a corner…
Now comes a very strange and rare West Ham goal, perfect for a game played on February 29th. Sébastien Haller plays a neat pass to Antonio who hits in a looping cross for which Haller and McCarthy challenge. You’ve seen these a hunded times. It always ends with the goalkeeper punching the ball cleanly away. Except this time McCarthy decides he’s going to catch it, and his flailing hands are no match for Haller’s jump, and he heads the ball clear of the keeper and lithely connects with it at the far post – his own assist – to restore West Ham’s lead. It’s his first goal since New Year’s Day and a very welcome one nullifying, as it does, Obefemi’s equaliser, after a minor VAR thirty second flap. A later raid on a European stats website reveals that each of Sebastien Haller’s 31 goals within the top five European leagues has been scored from inside the box (seven for West Ham and 24 for Eintracht Frankfurt).
The second half is a little less frenetic, despite Southampton’s phenomenal four from five wins on the road, and West Ham add to their lead ten minutes after the restart when a neat back header from Haller allows Fornals the chance to play Antonio through, and he finishes with a powerful right foot shot past McCarthy. 3-1. On the hour Antonio has the chance to score a second after a cheeky but brilliant rabona through ball from Haller, but this time McCarthy manages to get something on it to divert it inches wide. Hammers finish the game well after their narrow defeat at Anfield, and end up comfortable winners and out of the relegation zone that they had found themselves trapped inside for a week. This will prove more significant than the 60,000 departing fans realise, as the next game at this stadium will be played behind closed doors, four months from now.
For the moment, though, West Ham have ended the week with their first league goals and league points ever recorded on a February 29th. The next one that falls on a Saturday is in 2048. Put it in your diary now.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 52 Jeremy Ngakia, 23 Issa Diop, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 17 Jarrod Bowen, 16 Mark Noble (captain), 41 Declan Rice, 18 Pablo Fornals, 30 Michail Antonio, 22 Sebastien Haller
Substitutes: 11 Robert Snodgrass, 8 Felipe Anderson
Goals: Jarrod Bowen (14), Sébastien Haller (40), Michail Antonio (54).
