EXTRA TIME

Lingard Double and Moyes Sustainability

May 14, 2021 at 9:32 pm 2 comments

Jesse Lingard’s sensational strike at Wolverhampton Wanderers has won the Budweiser Premier League Goal of the Month award for April. The award completed a superb double for Lingard, who was also named EA Sports Premier League Player of the Month for April after scoring four goals and assisting a fifth in four Premier League appearances.

The England attacker (28) held off the challenge of Pablo Fornals, who also received a nomination for his own fine goal in West Ham United’s 3-2 win at Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Lingard opened the scoring with a wonderful individual effort that saw him collect the ball from Vladimír Coufal well inside his own half before running at the Wolves defence, taking advantage of a clever decoy run from Michail Antonio, before confidently and accurately finishing past Rui Patricio with his left foot.

West Ham won their first two games of April with the same result, beating Wolves and Leicester 3:2. In these games and also in their last match of March against Arsenal, the Hammers had managed to rush into a 3-goal-lead in each of these fixtures. When they could hold on to this advantage in two consecutive matches, with Lingard scoring twice in the win over third-placed Leicester and Mark Noble marking his 400th Premier League appearance in this game, the Irons sometimes were in front of Chelsea in fourth place and still have a chance to achieve qualification for the Champions League.

But with three defeats from the following four matches in April and May, the Irons now have to take care that they win their last three games against Brighton, West Brom and Southampton – otherwise the still existing possibility of Champions League football and seemingly certain qualification for the Europa League (for which the clubs ranked fifth to eighth will qualify) could end in final despair as West Ham still could drop down to tenth…

I hope and think this won’t happen. But it could become a nervy finish to the end of the season as West Ham now could suffer from the fact that its squad is quite slim and Declan Rice has been out for more than six weeks. The talismanic midfielder was injured in the Three Lions‘ win over Poland by the end of March and has not played ever since.

But I want to end on a positive note: Manager David Moyes has worked wonders with West Ham and kept his promise to improve the club. He has added steel and a winning mentality to his squad and made sure that the Irons wouldn’t be a team that could be easily beaten anymore.

Therefore we have been witnessing a real “Moyes March” out of mediocrity after the collapse of the “Pellegrini Revolution” which turned out to have been just a Chilean intermezzo between Moyes’s first and second spell. We do not know yet if the Irons will play in Europe and if Manchester Utd loanee Jesse Lingard will be with them next season, but one thing is for sure: It’s David Moyes who’s here to stay and long may he and his Hammers run!

Come on you Irons!

Entry filed under: Uncategorized.