Post-Match Report: West Ham 1-1 Tottenham 31/08/22

Last night West Ham drew 1-1 with Tottenham at the London Stadium. The game saw a Thilo Kehrer own goal open the scoring for Tottenham in the 34th minute, but this was later cancelled out by Tomas Soucek's strike in the 55 minute. The game was generally even, and in the end, a draw was probably a fair result, with both teams dominating in different parts of the game. The draw sees West Ham rise slightly to 14th, but the performance was much more positive than the previous outings this season, and it appears that the team is finally starting to gel together.

The game started with the reveal of club signing, Lucas Paqueta, who walked out to a huge applause from the West Ham faithful, which was almost as loud as when he came off the bench later in the game! The match started relatively evenly, however before long, Tottenham started to dominate the ball and were controversially denied a penalty by VAR, after referee Peter Bankes had initially awarded Tottenham the penalty. Tottenham manager Antonio Conte said in his post-match interview that VAR "embarrassed the referee". From here, West Ham began to come more into the game, with Michail Antonio hitting the post following a great move, however it was Tottenham who broke the deadlock. Spurs broke on an excellent counter attack and Thilo Kehrer unfortunately turned the ball into his own net, however, as Son was waiting right behind him, I don't think anybody could blame Kehrer at all and in fact he was arguably the best player on the pitch, with commanding defending and excellent distribution meaning that West Ham may well have done some great business to get the German in.

The game went into half time with Tottenham holding a slim but probably deserved 1-0 lead, although the hammers hadn't actually played that badly. However, as soon as the second half started, West Ham really came into the game, and it only took ten minutes before Tomas Soucek equalised following a lapse in concentration from the Spurs defence. From this point onwards, West Ham largely dominated the proceedings, and arguably could have snatched a winner with Bowen and Paqueta both having chances. Lucas Paqueta made his debut in the 67th minute and looked generally very positive. A mix up with fellow Brazilian, Emerson, meant a great chance was missed but the can definitely be excused given he hasn't even taken part in a training session yet. In general, the performance was very positive and was a massive improvement on what we have seen previously this season, we are beginning to look like the West Ham we saw last season. West Ham face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge this Saturday at 3:00 and this will be very interesting given how Chelsea seem to be lacking consistency in this early part of the season.