Kouyate’s first goal of the season gives Hammers three points in Noble’s 400th appearance

It wasn’t a pretty game of footy, but Cheikhou Kouyate’s first league goal of the season gave West Ham a priceless win on captain Mark Noble’s 400th appearance. The win was the Hammers’ first in eight games and put them eight points above the relegation zone with six to play.

Andy Carroll had scored five times in six games against Swansea in the lead up to this game, but Slaven Bilic opted to leave the lanky forward on the bench, with Andre Ayew, a former Swans player, chosen to lead the line and the trio of Lanzini, Antonio and Snodgrass picked to support the Ghanaian international.

Both teams, aware that a loss could drag them into the relegation dogfight [Read more…]

Mark Noble yellow carded on 400th appearance, to miss Sunderland & Everton games

Mark Noble marked his 400th appearance for West Ham with a yellow card that will see him miss the club’s next two games against Sunderland (away) and Everton (home). Noble’s 39th minute foul on Swansea City’s Leroy Fer (a rather unnecessary one at that) saw him collect his 10th yellow of the season, which according to the current rules, earns him a two match ban.

The more frustrating fact- the league’s yellow card “amnesty” kicks in on the second Sunday of April (April 9, 2017 for this season), and if Noble had got through this game without being booked, he would’ve avoided the ban.

Noble’s foul came just seconds after Michail Antonio injured his hamstring, leading to the latter being stretchered off and replaced by Jonathan Calleri [Read more…]

Ex Hammer Sebastian Lletget scores first international goal for USA, gets injured shortly after

Former West Ham medio Sebastian Lletget scored his first goal for the USMNT in their 6-0 win over Honduras at the Avaya Stadium. Lletget’s goal was the United States’ first of the game and came on 5 minutes.

And what perhaps again illustrates that Lletget was once indeed a West Ham player- minutes after scoring the goal, he was injured and replaced by Bedoya! [Read more…]

West Ham 2-3 Leicester

Prior to this game, Leicester hadn’t won a single game on the road this Premier League season. Of course, they had to do it at West Ham, they just had to.

Another disappointing game from West Ham- they were slow off the blocks (the lesser we speak of the defence the better), and had plenty of chances to draw or even win the game, but eventually finished on the wrong side of a 3-2 scoreline and gave Craig Shakespeare the record of being the first Leicester manager to start his Premier League campaign with three straight wins [Read more…]

Antonio out of England squad with hamstring injury

Michail Antonio will have to wait for his maiden England cap after the West Ham forward was ruled out of the Three Lions’ upcoming fixtures against Germany (also Lukas Podolski’s farewell game) and Lithuania. Antonio was the solitary Hammer to make the cut in Southgate’s original squad, with Andy Carroll missing out.

West Ham have been struggling with a spate of injuries with Pedro Obiang and Winston Reid also set to be out for an extended period of time. [Read more…]