EXTRA TIME

West Ham 4 Forest 0

February 25, 2023 at 9:37 pm Leave a comment

A frantic finale with four goals within fifteen minutes gave West Ham a thoroughly needed boost in its fight for Premier League survival: the Hammers deservedly beat Nottingham Forest 4-0 and moved up the table out of the relegation zone.

30 years and one day to the day the great and unforgettable Bobby Moore had died, the Hammers capped a much improved display with a significant win at London Stadium.

Before the game David Moyes, the West Ham manager, was asked about his team’s goal draught as they had only scored 19 goals from 23 games: “I’m not enjoying watching us not score,” Moyes answered, but insisted he had “to find a way to say if we’re not going to score, then how are we not going to lose?”

After a run of games against top-four-chasing Newcastle, and London rivals Chelsea and Spurs, Hammers fans were hoping that the meeting with Nottingham Forest provided an opportunity for Moyes to let his players off the leash, with January signing Danny Ings pushing for a first start. And it was Ings who brought the suffering Irons supporters joy:

Danny Ings scored his first and second goal after his signing from Aston Villa in the January window, making under-pressure manager Moyes run on to the pitch celebrating. Declan Rice and Michail Antonio added two more goals to the former Liverpool and Burnley striker‘s brace.

It had been a dire run of one win in 11 Premier League games which came to an end with this victory and a celebration round of the Hammers players after the game. The doubt over West Ham manager David Moyes’s immediate future has gone now as his side responded with an energetic display that eventually swept a limited Forest showing aside. Following the loss at Spurs in the last game, Moyes had suggested he would find out which of his players were “up for the fight”, and it seems he has done well with that.

As he had suggested, in his press conference prior to the game, his players showed quality, “that we’re ambitious, that we want to go and compete and win the game.”

With one league victory since October, Moyes introduced Ings into the starting lineup and also tinkered with his formation, switching to a back four, deploying Tomas Soucek in a more offensive role and handing increased midfield responsibility to Lucas Paqueta.

For 70 minutes however it hadn’t looked like it was going to be Ings’s day any more than his team’s. Coufal and Lukasz Fabianski were forced off with injury and the Hammers had hit the post twice. But the team did not give up trying and in the 70th minute redemption came and it came again three minutes later with Ings’s two goals, whom his manager praised “as someone who knows the art of attacking”. The two goal lead from Ings’s “proper centre forward goals” was doubled when Declan Rice imperiously gambolled forwards, played a cute one-two with Benrahma and curled his first league goal at the London Stadium since May 2021, and when substitute Antonio headed in a cross from short distance.

With this rout that few saw coming (West Ham’s highest win since last May against Norwich) Moyes became only the third manager after Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger to achieve 250 Premier League victories. “I’m not coming here with champagne and saying everything’s hunky dory,” Moyes insisted after the game. “But I’m thrilled. I’m going to have wine tonight. Why should I not? We’ve had bad days recently. I know there’s been a lot of noise outside the club, but there’s been nothing inside: I’ve had incredible backing. To stay in a job, a manager needs good owners. I had it at Preston and Everton and it’s the same here.”

However, some perspective is needed in east London as Nottingham Forest has the worst away record in the league, and the win means “that’sMoyes safe until out of the FA cup, lose to Brighton and exit the ECL”, as some West Ham fan of long experience put it in a comment in The Sunday Times.

Let’s hope that Moyes’s feeling that his team now “felt more like our old selves”, will last into the next games and help them climbing up the table and “look at the teams above”. The next league games are Brighton away and Aston Villa at home, but also the FA Cup and European journeys continue with a game every three or four days: next Wednesday it’s Manchester Utd away, and then AEK Larnaca is waiting in West Ham’s first tie of the knock-out round of the UEFA Conference League.

Come on you Irons!

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