An excellent performance from Alphonse Areola in goal, plus stoppage time goals from Tomas Soucek and Edson Alvarez (the latter’s first league one in WHUFC colours), gave West Ham a 3-1 win over Everton at Goodison Park.
The result, coupled with Man Utd’s 3-1 loss to City, means that the Hammers are now just two points behind sixth placed United in the table after GW27
Everton took the lead through Beto’s header before Kurt Zouma nodded home from a JWP corner at the other end. The match looked to be heading for a 1-1 draw before Soucek scored a stunner in the 91st minute (deffo worth a watch if you haven’t seen it!). As Everton desperately pushed men forward for an equaliser, they were vulnerable on the counter, and Jarrod Bowen set up Alvarez for the Mexican medio’s first ever PL goal, and that ended the hosts’ hopes.
This month is potentially a make or break one for Sean Dyche’s men, and they would certainly have targetted points against the Hammers, who, to be honest, were in awful form this year before the Brentford fixture. The nature of the defeat would’ve also stung for the home side- there were several chances that Beto and Dwight McNeil could’ve put away (and that’s not counting the missed penalty that was saved by Areola).
All the major attacking stats in the game (possession, shots on target) were in Everton’s favour and the end scoreline probably flattered West Ham a bit, but they won’t be complaining one bit, and will now look at beating Freiburg in the EL Round of 16.
West Ham’s last EL fixture in the group stages was also against Freiburg, and the bizarre nature of the draw after the introduction of the playoff round made it possible for group stage teams to play against each other again, giving us an early WHUFC SCF re-match.
Like West Ham, Freiburg will take a lot of heart from their weekend result- they held mighty Bayern Munich to a 2-2 draw. They took the lead through Christian Gunter’s 12th minute goal, then fell behind to strikes from Mathys Tel and Jamal Musiala before finally getting a point thanks to Lucas Holer’s superb 87th minute strike.
Daniel-Kofi Kyereh, Max Rosenfelder, Lukas Kubler and Kenneth Schmidt are unavailable for SCF, who will have to play the return leg at the London Stadium next week. A card here for Philipp Lienhart (should he play) will rule him out of the second leg.
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