HAMMERS BUBBLE BURST BY TOFFEES
Champions League hopes dealt huge blow by defeat
WEST HAM’S Champions League dreams faded and died into a sorry, soapy mess against David Moyes’ former side.
Ultimately, without Mark Noble and Declan Rice in the side, they were just not bubbly enough to bounce back from Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s early goal.
Now with five points to make up on fourth-placed Leicester in just three games – and others queueing up to board – it seems the gravy train will not be taking advantage of the superb rail network hub which was part of the reason the owners moved the club to Stratford in the first place.
Less glamorous are the journeys to the further reaches of the continent that tend to be involved in Europe’s lesser competitions, and Moyes’ big concern having fought such a remarkable campaign is that they miss out on the experience altogether.
Everton are right up there in contention again to try to oust one of Liverpool or Tottenham out of Europe completely.
It looks like being the one remaining intriguing battle in the Premier League. That said, it took a long while for this encounter to really get going.
The opening goal was a demonstration of understated simplicity. Calvert-Lewin just ghosted past Craig Dawson onto Ben Godfrey’s neat pass, set himself and picked a spot beyond Lukasz Fabianski in the far corner.
The West Ham goalkeeper did well to push away a Gylfi Sigurdsson free-kick and keep his side in the game.
But Everton were being allowed far too much time to settle on the ball and playing much the better football – very much a return to form after just one win in their previous eight games. The one chance the home side had to level the scores before the break was headed over the bar by Said Benrahma after he was picked out by Pablo Fornals.
West Ham were better in the second half and on a different day Vladimir Coufal’s shot would not have bounced off the inside of the post, hit Jarrod Bowen and fallen into the arms of Jordan Pickford.
By the same token, a Josh King header with his first touch after coming on for Everton might have crept in instead of also hitting the woodwork.
WEST HAM (4-2-3-1): Fabianski 7; Coufal 7, Dawson 5, Diop 6, Cresswell 5 (Fredericks 59, 6); Soucek 7, Lanzini 5 (Bowen 43, 5); Fornals 8, Lingard 5, Benrahma 6 (Yarmolenko 73); Antonio 6.
EVERTON (3-5-2): Pickford 6; Godfrey 6, Mina 6 (Holgate 62, 6), Keane 6; Coleman 7, Davies 6, Allan 6, Sigurdsson 6 (Delph 85), Digne 7; Richarlison 6 (King 84), Calvert-Lewin 8. Goal: Calvert-Lewin 24.