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Defeat changed nothing as all eyes turned to Swansea

Arsenal 3 Hammers 0

Mark-Noble-640914So in the end script unchanged – it’s all down to Saturday and Swansea at the London Stadium!

Win and we stay up, draw and we remain favourites to be in the PL next season – lose and it’s a nightmare scenario.

In my book Swansea simply have to be beaten and once we went behind my eyes were fixed on the Swansea/Spurs score updates which came to a dramatic conclusion when the Welsh clubs early lead was cancelled out by 88th, 91st and 94th minute goals.

And with us truly expecting little tonight maybe – after leading for so long – it will be the Swans who will be lower on confidence  when they come to us on Saturday.

Back to tonight and the plusses were a very fine first half performance defensively which saw us go in all square, and decent performances throughout from Masuaku, Collins, Noble and Lanzini in particular.

And how great was it – despite the state of the game – to see a fit and stronger than he’s ever looked Sakho make his entrance in the second half.

He wasn’t sharp enough of course to become a game changer but I am totally convinced that the best striker in the club will have a big impact on the remainder of the season.

The first goal was a horror show when Fonte – looking to me as incompetent as it gets – played a careless pass out when under pressure and Ozil struck a goal which frankly Randolph might have pushed around a post.

The other two were almost bound to follow and came from Walcott and Giroud – both unstoppable from a goalkeeping point of view.

That allowed Arsenal to poke the ball around making us look like a bunch of muppets but that is how they play and by this stage all eyes were on Swansea anyway.

I can’t say thank you to that north London club but I think I speak for all of us when I say I was relieved.

 

 

About Hugh5outhon1895

Hugh Southon is a lifelong Iron and the founding editor of ClaretandHugh. He is a national newspaper journalist of many years experience and was Bobby Moore's 'ghost' writer during the great man's lifetime. He describes ClaretandHugh as "the Hammers daily newspaper!" Follow on Twitter @hughsouthon

9 comments on “Defeat changed nothing as all eyes turned to Swansea

  1. No embarrassment losing to Arsenal tbh. First half we were best we’ve played for ages, second half their quality showed. Lanzini, Masuaku and for me Byram played well. Randolph MUST be dropped – how many goals do we have to let in before he is benched?!! Collins and Fonte are as pacey as my nan on crutches and are a liability. Noble was better. Such a shame Antonio went off-snodgrass is struggling to recreate his Hull form.

    Swansea is massive! Coyi

  2. I put it down in black & white last week – when we are beaten by Arsenal it will be absolutely critical that we beat Swansea . The team’s confidence will be in tatters & they will panic. I will say it again. With this team we will not beat Swansea, & then the fun starts ! Can anyone really see where we are going to get 2 wins from ? I can’t.

  3. Let’s hope that Antonio was withdrawn to save him for Saturday – can’t wait!

  4. The game plan was working until once again Randolph cost us a goal with his shocking keeping. He keeps making mistake after mistake and yet Bilic keeps playing him ahead of the vastly superior goalkeeper Adrian.

    I’m trying my hardest to keep defending Slaven, but he is making it awfully hard to do that,

    Not sure how anyone can say Byram played well, he should have been sent off at least three different times, but the ref bottled it.

    • PS I say the game plan was working, only in the sense it was still 0-0. But Arsenal were completely outplaying us and I guess it was only a matter of time before they scored. But if Randolph had not mucked up yet again, who knows?

  5. I went to the game and though I prefer Adrian , Randolph made some great first half saves in front of our end.Watching live you couldn’t really see the goals at the other end.Removing Antonio, though understandable in view of his injury , took a lot of pressure off Arsenal and Snodgrass was poor.Not sure Ayew deserves such low ratings as Hugh gave him.

  6. Kind of starting to prey that Bilic is preparing his bags just in case . If we manage to stay up by the skin of our teeth without some serious ambition next season it’ll only get worse .

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