What a difference 15 minutes can make. For half of this affair a bad week showed the potential to deteriorate further for Tottenham, who had laboured against a similarly uninspiring West Ham and showed nothing to enthuse the recuperating Antonio Conte as he watched from home. But a quarter of an hour inside with his deputy, Cristian Stellini, brought a team transformed: Spurs were strong, aggressive and smart in the second period and deservedly won with two fine goals.
Emerson Royal scored a superbly worked first and it will do no harm that Son Heung-min, relegated to the bench, added his first league strike since January 4th within four minutes of coming on. Spurs return to the Champions League places and perhaps this was something of a reset; for David Moyes, the spectre of relegation was made no fainter by an ultimately bland display.
Neither starting line-up had screamed of adventure. Moyes had to do without the injured Lucas Paquetá and also dropped Saïd Benrahma, replacing the pair with the workmanlike qualities of Tomas Soucek and Flynn Downes. Spurs’ management team had selected Richarlison ahead of Son in a side bereft of obvious guile behind its front three. Ben Davies, usually picked as a centre back under Conte, was deployed further wide.
There was a snap to the early proceedings, though, and it would have brought a goal within the first minute if Jarrod Bowen had found his bearings. He was alone on the edge of the D after Soucek helped the ball across but half-volleyed a yard wide of Fraser Forster’s left post; it was a half chance but indicated West Ham had not travelled simply to spoil.
They continued to set the pace, winning two corners within five minutes. Shortly after the second of them, Soucek won possession cleanly from Davies and missed a presentable opportunity to square for Michail Antonio. When Oliver Skipp attempted to demonstrate equivalent bite for Spurs, he scythed into Antonio and was rightly booked for an unpleasant challenge.
From the hosts’ point of view it was at least a show of intent. They assumed some kind of initiative, seeing a penalty appeal rejected by VAR after Thilo Kehrer inadvertently handballed Richarlison’s pass while getting up from the ground, but a succession of crosses failed to find their intended targets.
West Ham packed bodies behind the ball but were happy enough to throw them forward if space opened up. In the 18th minute a Bowen cross-shot was only inches beyond the sliding Downes and, in general, they were sharper to the second ball. As the half-hour passed there was no faulting the tempo from either side but little sign of a goal, the lack of flair in both starting XIs proving self-fulfilling.
So it continued. Spurs tried again but neither Davies nor Richarlison launched himself to attack a presentable Emerson delivery. A speculative Pierre-Emile Højbjerg drive was comfortably dived upon by Lukasz Fabianski and applauded more loudly than it deserved, presumably for the show of ambition. Before kick-off the South Stand had held up a display celebrating Harry Kane setting a new club goalscoring record two weeks previously but here he had primarily been concerned with attempting to make things tick from deep.
As the interval approached he finally succeeded to some extent, floating a ball over the defence for Richarlison, sent slightly wide, to demand a save from Fabianski’s legs. Clément Lenglet headed the resulting corner on to the roof of the net. It was by a distance the most exciting sequence of the first half.
Who else could conceivably open a largely turgid affair up? Three minutes after half-time Nayef Aguerd almost did so, unintentionally, by allowing Kane to steal in and feed Dejan Kulusevski but the Swede delayed his shot and eventually squared for Richarlison, whose effort was poor. Almost immediately Declan Rice, similarly sloppy, lost possession and Kane snatched a shot well wide from a presentable angle. Vladimir Coufal then lost out to Richarlison, beginning a move that saw Kulusevski cross too high for Kane; Spurs had re-emerged with significantly more intent.
It was borne out by a goal that, even if its scorer could hardly have been predicted, was starting to look possible. Højbjerg, showing welcome craft, slipped a deliciously weighted low ball from deep for a buccaneering Davies to run beyond Coufal and Angelo Ogbonna. Charging to his right was Emerson who, with the chance laid on a plate, passed coolly into a static Fabianski’s far corner.
From nowhere, Spurs’ wing backs had contrived a dazzling example of brio and initiative. They were a completely different animal, although they soon had to thank Forster for denying Bowen a quick equaliser. Otherwise they were dominant now, Emerson jokingly implored to shoot every time he took the ball. Son, a more likely candidate to do that, made his entrance to cheers midway through the half and quickly eliminated any doubts. Slipped in beautifully by Kane, who had forced an error from Ogbonna, he did the rest and firmly cast aside the gloom. – Guardian
