West Ham celebrated a stunning 3-0 win at Leicester City in the Premier League on Sunday, ending the Foxes’ perfect start after three straight wins thanks to goals from Michail Antonio, Pablo Fornals and Jarrod Bowen.
With their manager David Moyes absent after testing positive for coronavirus, the Hammers produced a breathtaking performance under his assistant Alan Irvine in their first away league win of the season.
The result provisionally left Leicester second in the standings on nine points from four games while the Hammers briefly climbed to sixth on six points ahead of the afternoon fixtures.
Following their impressive 5-2 win at Manchester City a week ago, Leicester were brought crashing down to earth against the visitors, who could have won by a bigger margin.
Antonio said West Ham were reaping the rewards of their counter-attacking strategy engineered by Moyes and his backroom staff.
“We’ve come out and in the last few games we’ve played well, even in the games that we’ve lost,” the 30-year old forward was quoted as saying by West Ham’s official website (whufc.com).
“You could see that we’re working on playing with the ball more, on our shape, working out from our shape with great counter-attacks, and you see that we’re becoming the finished article.”
“I think (David Moyes) speaks to Alan (Irvine) on the phone. We don’t know what he says, but all we know is we’ve gone out there, given a good performance, and we’ll make sure we carry it on.”
Antonio headed West Ham into a 14th-minute lead as he rose at the far post to meet a long Aaron Cresswell cross and steer the ball into the opposite corner.
Fornals made it 2-0 in the 34th when he took a lofted pass in his stride and beat home goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel with a left-footed shot from eight metres after holding off two defenders.
Declan Rice hit the underside of the bar for West Ham after a darting solo run from inside his own half before Bowen put the icing on the cake with a clinical finish in the 83rd minute, courtesy of a defence-splitting pass by Fornals.
The home side’s miserable afternoon was summed up when Jamie Vardy missed a 90th-minute sitter before Harvey Barnes had a stoppage time goal scrapped by VAR after a one-two with Vardy who was marginally offside.
Saints compound West Brom troubles with 2-0 victory
Southampton beat an insipid West Bromwich Albion 2-0 in the Premier League with goals either side of halftime from Moussa Djenepo and Oriol Romeu at St Mary’s Stadium on Sunday to leave the visitors in danger of dropping into the relegation zone.
Southampton’s second consecutive win and clean sheet moved them up to 10th in the standings while winless West Brom remained in 17th place with a point after four games, with the bottom teams having a game in hand.
“We have been very clinical today. Good game management in the game,” Saints boss Ralph Hasenhuettl told BT Sport. “The pressing was nearly perfect today, we never had the feeling of having little bit problems. I felt we were well organised.
“It’s absolutely important to have other guys scoring. If (Danny) Ings is not scoring the other guys need to do so. It was good we had subs to put in like (Shane) Long, who helped us in the end with his quality on the pitch.
Southampton had a couple of chances to take an early lead but goalkeeper Sam Johnstone stood strong to make reflex saves to deny Ryan Bertrand, Stuart Armstrong and a Che Adams strike from close range inside the first 15 minutes.
But Johnstone could do nothing when Moussa Djenepo received the ball in the box and executed a sharp turn to shrug off two defenders and fire a low shot into the bottom corner, giving the home side the lead four minutes before the break.
Romeu then produced a stunner with 20 minutes to play when he leapt into the air to latch on to an Armstrong cross, firing home a thunderous volley for his first goal in 50 games for the club.
“I’m not used to hitting the ball that well,” Romeu said. “I had space when the ball came to me and it ended up in the back of the net. Happy for the team and on we go, feeling good.”
