Match Review: West Ham United 2-2 Brighton
Well, that was all a bit crazy, wasn’t it? Two goals in the space of two second half minutes saw Brighton and Hove Albion go 2-0 up at the London Stadium and seemingly cruising towards victory, only for West Ham United to repeat the trick 10 minutes later to earn a 2-2 draw.
If you’d offered us a point before the game, we’d have taken it. But the way in which poor defending allowed West Ham back into the tie when the Albion looked in complete control meant that most Albion supporters left Stratford feeling like this was two points dropped in the end. Which sadly, it was.
The first half was pretty nondescript and gave no indication of the drama that was to come. David Button made a couple of routine saves from Marko Arnautovic while Lukasz Fabianski was pretty much unemployed at the other end.
Fabianski’s lack of employment wasn’t for the want of trying though. There’s no doubt that Chris Hughton has become more proactive away from home in recent weeks, helped by abandoning the every-man-apart-from-Murray behind the ball tactics we’d employed in our first 18 months in the Premier League in favour of a more attacking line up.
It’s almost a 4-3-3 at times. Jurgen Locadia and Solly March were being asked to support Glenn Murray as opposed to not being allowed more than 10 metres away from their respective full backs and you could see, rather like in the 2-1 win at Huddersfield Town and the first 20 minutes away at Plucky Little Bournemouth, that the men in yellow were actually trying to go for it.
That positive approach was rewarded with goals in the 56th and 58th minutes, both coming from corners. It seems insane to think that in the whole of the 2017-18 season, we managed to score just once from a set piece – Lewis Dunk’s header in the 2-1 win over Arsenal. The double strike at the London Stadium made it 10 goals from corners this season. West Ham boss Manuel Pellegrini even hailed the Albion as “set piece experts” afterwards.
The first was a cracking strike from Dale Stephens. Neither him nor Davy Propper had managed a goal in our past 59 Premier League games so it was nice to finally see a central midfielder chip in, Stephens hitting a rasping volley through a crowd of players after Fabianski had made a bit of a hash of attempting to clear Pascal Gross’ corner.
Stephens has been on the receiving end of some harsh criticism in recent weeks, based on the fact that Yves Bissouma has a catchy song and sometimes dances to it. There are still doubts about the £15m summer signing from LOSC Lille‘s abilities defensively and that is why Hughton prefers to put his trust in Stephens, particularly away from home. Hopefully, Stephens’ goal will keep the haters quiet for a week or two.
Less than 120 seconds later and Shane Duffy doubled the advantage. West Ham couldn’t deal with another Gross corner and the Irishman had time and space at the far post to bring the ball down on his chest and hit a controlled volley past Fabianski.
Duffy now has four goals this season, one more than Wilfried “the best player outside of the top six” Zaha has managed. He of course also threw a brilliant, no nonsense headbutt to get sent off in the same game that Zaha cried over someone throwing a £4.50 chicken and gammon pie at him. If Zaha is worth £50m, you can double that for Duffy on this season’s relative showings.
At that point, it looked like a convincing win similar to last season’s 3-0 triumph could be on the cards. On that occasion, Slaven Bilic in the home dugout looked more confused than a homeless man who has been placed under arrest. This time, West Ham had wily old Pellegrini calling the shots and it was his double change that got the hosts back in the game as Mark Noble and Michail Antonio entered proceedings.
Defensive lapses aside, the other thing that made the surrender of all three points depressing was the protagonists who created it. The Albion must have played against Noble and Antonio on over 20 occasions combined. They’ve never done anything of note. Yet here, Antonio in particular was made to look like he was George Best taking up dry January reincarnated.
Noble created the first, playing a chipped pass over the top to Arnautovic who Duffy gave way too much time and space, allowing him to place the ball through the legs of Button. Although not entirely Button’s fault, it was the sort of chance we’ve become all too accustomed to Maty Ryan saving but if Duffy hadn’t have been so deep in the first place, it is doubtful that Arnautovic would’ve had the opportunity to finish anyway.
If being too deep was the cause of the first West Ham goal, then it was the polar opposite for the second which came shortly after. Bernardo, seemingly forgetting we were defending a one-goal lead, found himself further forward than Locadia and Murray. It was like somebody in the home stands was controlling him on FIFA and had just sent him as far up the pitch as possible with no regard for what would happen if West Ham broke down our left.
Quite what he was doing up there is anybody’s guess, but Antonio took full advantage of the space that afforded him to get to the byline and pull the ball back for Arnautovic to notch his second of the evening. From 2-0 to 2-2 in less than two minutes and to make matters worse, Bernardo was substituted with what must have been an injury to his common sense given his role in the Hammers equaliser.
The momentum was completely with West Ham for the final 20 minutes. Declan Rice came to the boil nicely but his effort hit the side netting and the dangerous Arnautovic went close to claiming a hat-trick. Brighton managed to survive the onslaught to claim a point, another precious one which probably leaves us just four wins short of safety with half the season to play.
We’d have taken that at the start of the season, just like we’d have taken a point at 7pm in East London. Doesn’t make gifting two away any less disappointing, though.
