Leicester City 2 Hammers 2
By Hughie Southon
Craig Dawson was the hero as the Hammers grabbed a 90th minute equaliser after Leicester had come from behind to lead.
The central defender’s late goal came off his shoulder and sleeve but was given although it should never have come to this as the Hammers really let the home side back into the game after a great start.
Jarrod Bowen had scored the opener following a fine ball forward from Issa Diop who replaced Kurt Zouma who had cried off with illness.
He was was travelling back to London as his replacement provided the assist for a fine left footed shot to give Bowen his 12th goal of the season.
Despite taking their foot off the pedal, the Hammers remained in front until Aaron Cresswell gave away a crazy penalty off his arm which Tielmans smashed into a corner past Fabianski.
That was the first Foxes shot on goal in the first 45 minutes but it was a different story in the second half as they piled on the pressure.
City – with right winger Barnes – giving Cofal nightmares took the lead when the winger centred for Pereira to score and that looked that until Dawson found the net with his attempted header with a couple of minutes left.
The Hammers can count themselves fortuitous as once again they were not at their best and looked set for defeat for a long time.
Thanks Daws!
Yet again, the players looked tired and substitutions came way too late…. fortunate to grab a late equaliser.
I mean how poor must Kral, Vlassic and others be if they cannot get a sniff of playing time as the likes of Soucek and Fornals looked tired out?
That was a trully shocking performance by us, we had Leicester down and out after 10 minutes and let them back into the game because of our inability to keep the pressure on when we were in the lead. Leicester played Thursday, Alan Smith had it right when he said, when you are ahead with a team thats in a bad run you grind them into the floor, thats what we are not doing, we step off the pressure and continually allow teams back into the game, we have no hope of top 6 let alone top 4 if we continue to do that, this should have been an easy game instead our weak spot with Cresswell was exposed repeatedly and they scored two goals from that. Moyes needs to do some work with the team to boost their confidence, Newcastle are in relation to us flying, if Harvey Barnes was a threat St Maximin is a different beast altogether and will terrorise us.
Am happy Dawson salvaged us a point but very disappointed with the overall performance with very few of our players scoring much more than 5 out of 10, even Dec and Soucek looked subdued in comparison to normal. This is why clubs buy players in the winter window, it gives teams a boost and the board and Moyes need to sort this shambles out, none of us are buying their lines which hold about as much integrity as a Boris Johnson promise.