Sometimes the journey brings more pleasure than the destination. The bare fact that West Ham and Arsenal took a point each tells nothing of a contest that may not be improved upon all season and left everyone involved torn between joy and regret. Essentially this was two games in one: the 35 minutes in which the team managed by David Moyes overwhelmed their opponents and looked certain to burnish their top-four credentials handsomely; then the hour or so in which Arsenal stepped up several gears, overhauled a three-goal deficit and mustered their best football of a see-sawing campaign.
Nobody who had watched West Ham perform so redoubtably since September would have looked past them when Tomas Soucek scored their third goal, inadvertently deflecting Michail Antonio’s header past Bernd Leno. They were in complete control: Arsenal had barely posed them a question and looked every inch an inconsistent mid-table side dogged by the added burden of Thursday night Europa League assignments. The away side looked leggy, sloppy, sluggish in mind and body; that only made the upturn in their output even more remarkable and it said plenty that, by the end, they looked the more likely winners.
If this match can be reduced to anything then perhaps it was a battle of two loanees, both stationed nominally in the No 10 position but given freedom to roam. Jesse Lingard was an electric presence for West Ham, cracking in a blistering opener and thinking quickly to create a second goal for Jarrod Bowen. While Martin Ødegaard’s influence will not be recorded quite as clearly for posterity, the Norwegian was the outstanding individual on the pitch as Arsenal worked their way back. It was the kind of display through which a player makes his own teammates better: Ødegaard had a hand in all of Arsenal’s goals, his gliding movement and weight of passing proving impossible to stifle.
“He had an incredible performance,” said Mikel Arteta of Ødegaard. “He showed how much he wants to win. When everybody was trembling a little bit, he gave us that ability and composure on the ball, and he created chance after chance.”
Never mind trembling: Arsenal were rocked wildly in those early moments by an attack-minded West Ham team that scented blood. This was another occasion to buck the expired cliche that Moyes’s offerings are pale and stale. Soucek had missed two headed half-chances before Lingard, found perceptively on the edge of the box by Antonio after the striker had made ground down the left, sliced across the ball and sent it rocketing into the far corner.
Within two minutes Arsenal were on their heels after Bukayo Saka fouled Antonio. Lingard knew it and played a quick free-kick to Bowen, whose angled shot went through Leno. The goalkeeper had to do better but he was hardly alone in that. Kieran Tierney, usually so reliable, was the next culprit when failing to control a Leno ball out to the left. Several passes later Vladimir Coufal was swinging over a dipping cross that Antonio, beating David Luiz in the air, converted via Soucek’s toe.
Those concessions were “unacceptable”, Arteta said. From West Ham’s perspective it was, according to Moyes, “as well as we’ve played in a while”. He justifiably felt that a less profitable snick off Soucek, helping Alexandre Lacazette’s 37th-minute shot past Lukasz Fabianski, was the turning point. Ødegaard had fed a galloping Calum Chambers to create the chance and it set the tone for what followed.
Saka could have scored twice before half-time and, moments after the restart, Issa Diop cleared heroically off the line from Lacazette. It had become that kind of game, largely controlled by Arsenal and Ødegaard but with West Ham packing a punch on the counter. Moyes and his players were furious before the hour when the referee, Jon Moss, refused to play advantage on a promising break; moments later their tempers worsened when Bowen thought he had won a free-kick but instead saw it awarded to the visitors. This time Arsenal were the alert ones, moving possession on instantly, and Ødegaard sent Chambers clear again with a cute reverse pass. The deputy right-back’s wicked delivery was volleyed into his own net at full pelt by an unfortunate Craig Dawson.
“The officiating was tough for the players today,” said Moyes in a thinly veiled attempt at diplomacy. That would have been forgotten if Antonio, sliding in front of goal after bewitching approach work from Saïd Benrahma, had not hit the post when given a golden chance to settle West Ham’s doubts.
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Instead Arsenal kept coming and, by the time it came, the equaliser seemed inevitable. Nicolas Pépé had just come on when, found by Ødegaard, he made rare good use of his weaker right foot and whipped across a ball that Lacazette converted with a thundering far-post header.
“Probably the best that I have seen us play,” Arteta said when assessing the final hour. “Looking at the chances, we could have scored six or seven.” Pépé could have won it but shot at Fabianski; Declan Rice had his own late opening but saw Leno parry. What a long road to such a prosaic outcome, but what a scintillating exhibition along the way.
from Football | The Guardian https://ift.tt/313l7aF
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