Hammers still have Wolves at the door
Moyes continues to look over his shoulder
KARREN BRADY wanted this season to be declared null and void and we all had a good idea why. We still do. Of all the things that have changed around us in the past three months, the many and varied shortcomings of her club have found a way of surviving the plague.
Clearly the West Ham side that has blinked its way back into the light bears a painful resemblance to the one that retreated to the darkened rooms of lockdown, begging for the beatings to stop. They haven’t, and to see Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester United among their remaining fixtures, it is hard to see when they will end.
As for where, that might be an easier one to answer, on the basis that with one win in 10 they now sit outside the bottom three on goal difference alone. It is grim, and so are the nuts and bolts of the performances, on the other side of the pandemic and this.
That is not to say there has been no progress. Even on the back of this defeat, drawn from secondhalf goals from Raul Jimenez and Pedro Neto, you could see the tiniest patches of improvement. Indeed, for 70 minutes or more against a good side they showed a level of defensive organisation that appeared beyond the teachings of Manuel Pellegrini, but that is not nearly enough. Not by a street.
The sides available to David Moyes are still woefully short of striking talent, and that, among other frailties around the backline, is why they fluffed the one decent chance they created here, and then twice botched their marking to give up those two goals in the final 17 minutes.
Against most sides, that will not do; against the latter-day Wolves it will always be doomed to fail. For that you have to admire the ongoing work of Nuno Espirito Santo, who transformed a mediocre return to football with two exceptional substitutions. Namely they were the late introductions of Adama Traore, who was involved in both
goals, and Neto, the scorer of the second.
With it, Wolves took their unbeaten run to six. Add to that a fifth clean sheet in six, and they have stitched together the two phases of this season without an ugly seam. The top four is a real possibility, more so when you study how ki ndly t he f i xtures have fallen.
Nuno tends to bury a f rown beneath t hat mass beard, and his words tend to keep to the image, but he has a lot to feel optimistic about. Reflecting on this one, in the eerie new normal of closed- doors football, he was reserved. ‘The main factor is football i s not enjoyable without the fans in the stadium,’ he said. ‘You have to perform for the fans at home, and then hopefully we can go back to how it was soon. We have eight games to go, next one Bournemouth at home. It will be tough. We have to rest, recover and prepare well.’ That was as close to hyperbole as he will stray. Moyes, truer to the result, struck a similar tone.
‘We missed the atmosphere and that is what we are going to have get better at,’ he said. ‘We are disappointed we lost but we did some things well. The game changed when Traore came on.
‘I think we need to improve our attacking play. We were short of attacking players. But there was a lot of the defensive stuff where we did a good job.’
Moyes’s difficulties were laid bare even before kick-off. Just as it was the case before the break, he struggled with personnel and balance. For this first game back he was without Angelo Ogbonna, Robert Snodgrass, Arthur Masuaku and Sebastien Haller, each because of minor injuries, and as ever he had no obvious striker. Of the 11 included, there was a final play for the heart of Jeremy Ngakia. With the 19-year-old determined to leave at the end of his contract later this month, his selection for a fifth start of the campaign felt like a punt of desperation to keep him.
Nuno’s side, set up in the 3-5-2 shape he usually reserves for lesser opposition now, controlled possession but struggled for chances. West Ham, by contrast, spent most of the first half without the ball but had the best opening, which Pablo Fornals blew by ballooning a shot over the bar.
That was the best of it until Traore came on. In his first involvement he beat two men and in his second he went past two more before crossing for Jimenez. Issa Diop lost his man while watching the delivery and Jimenez headed his 23rd of the season across all competitions.
The second came from the same flank. Traore was again involved, this time in the lesser role of playing in Matt Doherty on the right, and his cross was flushed in on the volley by Neto. A lovely finish to a dull game.