Hammers Smash Leicester’s Perfect Start

West Ham celebrated a stunning 3-0 win at Leicester City in the Premier League on Sunday, ending the Foxes’ perfect start after three straight wins thanks to goals from Michail Antonio, Pablo Fornals and Jarrod Bowen.

With their manager David Moyes absent after testing positive for coronavirus, the Hammers produced a breathtaking performance under his assistant Alan Irvine in their first away league win of the season.

The result provisionally left Leicester second in the standings on nine points from four games while the Hammers briefly climbed to sixth on six points ahead of the afternoon fixtures.

Following their impressive 5-2 win at Manchester City a week ago, Leicester were brought crashing down to earth against the visitors, who could have won by a bigger margin.

Antonio said West Ham were reaping the rewards of their counter-attacking strategy engineered by Moyes and his backroom staff.

“We’ve come out and in the last few games we’ve played well, even in the games that we’ve lost,” the 30-year old forward was quoted as saying by West Ham’s official website (whufc.com).

“You could see that we’re working on playing with the ball more, on our shape, working out from our shape with great counter-attacks, and you see that we’re becoming the finished article.”

“I think (David Moyes) speaks to Alan (Irvine) on the phone. We don’t know what he says, but all we know is we’ve gone out there, given a good performance, and we’ll make sure we carry it on.”

Antonio headed West Ham into a 14th-minute lead as he rose at the far post to meet a long Aaron Cresswell cross and steer the ball into the opposite corner.

Fornals made it 2-0 in the 34th when he took a lofted pass in his stride and beat home goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel with a left-footed shot from eight metres after holding off two defenders.

Declan Rice hit the underside of the bar for West Ham after a darting solo run from inside his own half before Bowen put the icing on the cake with a clinical finish in the 83rd minute, courtesy of a defence-splitting pass by Fornals.

The home side’s miserable afternoon was summed up when Jamie Vardy missed a 90th-minute sitter before Harvey Barnes had a stoppage time goal scrapped by VAR after a one-two with Vardy who was marginally offside.

Reuters