Reid thwarts Black Cats at the death
WEST HAM UTD 1 Reid (90) SUNDERLAND 0
SUNDERLAND were seconds away from claiming a richly-deserved, oh-so-vital point when Winston Reid struck a left-foot shot through a sea of bodies and beat Jordan Pickford.
David Moyes and his players immediately looked across to the linesman. So did referee Bobby Madley, but, surprisingly to most, the flag stayed down.
No one had got a touch, but replays showed a crowd of Hammers players blocking Pickford’s sightline, and Moyes argued afterwards that the officials got it wrong.
Substitute Jonathan Calleri, who allowed the ball to pass through his legs, was standing directly in front of the Black Cats keeper.
Angry and deflated Moyes said: “I’ve spoken to the match official and he thinks it’s onside. I definitely think it’s offside.
“You can tell from his reaction because he walks towards the linesman, so he’s aware there was a problem with it.
“It was disappointing because the players really earned something from today.
“We’re trying to build a bit of confidence. OK, we should have done better at the corner but we needed the decision to go our way and it didn’t.”
Hammers boss Slaven Bilic sympathised with the Scot but agreed with referee Madley.
“It was hard for the ref because it’s impossible for him to see it,” he said. “I’d have been as David is if it happened to me.
“But we have the luxury of freezing the pictures and we see that Callieri was not offside.”
Moyes’s team had defended so well in the second period that Pickford hadn’t had a shot to save.
One point and their first clean sheet of the season wouldn’t have taken them off the bottom of the table, but at least it would have been something to build on.
Without it, Sunderland are now cut adrift at the bottom. They’ve made poor starts in each of their last four seasons and survived, but they’ve never had two points after nine games.
Moyes has acknowledged that the team has gone backwards since they escaped the drop last May and despite his players showing they’re up for the fight he is now is deep trouble.
Sunderland had seemed to be set for a torrid afternoon when Dmitri Payet spent the first half hour slicing them apart. Moyes admitted: “I wouldn’t have said we’d get anything out of the game after 30 minutes. I thought there was only one outcome and West Ham would win it.
“We found it difficult dealing with Payet and Manuel Lanzini, but we got to grips with it, got back into it and I thought we did alright in the second half.”
Bilic said: “I think first the first 25-30 minutes was the best we’ve played, and not only this season. We just couldn’t score.”
Payet curled one shot just wide of Jordan Pickford’s post and wove a brilliant run through the soft centre of Sunderland’s defence, only to fire his shot straight at the keeper.
Then in the 26th minute the Frenchman struck the foot of the post with Pickford well beaten.
But the lack of an early breakthrough seemed to take the steam out of the Hammers and slowly Sunderland began to get a foothold in the game.
They weren’t exactly threatening but Jack Rodwell flashed a header wide, Jermaine Defoe’s shot on the spin was straight at Adrian and Patrick van Anholt sliced wide at the end of a decent run.
And they really ought to have taken the lead a minute after the re-start when Steven Pienaar’s pass was deflected into the path of Wahbi Khazri but his shot was turned away by Adrian.
With their one chance gone begging, the Black Cats settled for digging in and frustrating the Hammers, knowing that the longer the home side went without breaking the deadlock the more restless the London Stadium crowd would become.
And Sunderland defended well, not giving Bilic’s team a sniff until 20 seconds from the end of the four additional minutes.
They forced a corner on the right, the ball found its way back to Reid and, whatever the merits of the offside claims, he was given too much time to set himself up for his shot.