{"id":228913,"date":"2025-10-21T02:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T02:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/228913\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T02:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T02:28:07","slug":"west-ham-united-0-2-brentford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/228913\/","title":{"rendered":"West Ham United 0 – 2 Brentford"},"content":{"rendered":"

The team selection took everyone by surprise: None of the trio of returning International defenders got a start with Esp\u00edrito Santo preferring those players he\u2019d had two weeks to drill. The key then was how the Hammers<\/a> started. First fifteen minutes safely negotiated and the first long throw safely negotiated thanks to Soucek\u2019s head meeting the ball. And that was as good as it got.<\/p>\n

How to sum up that first half? Poor, poorer and poorest,. The Irons should have been out of the contest by half time but stayed just a goal down thanks to VAR and Brentford\u2019s own poor finishing,<\/p>\n

The fact that West Ham brought on three defenders at half time spoke volumes. A never ending series of corners and long throws rained down throughout the first half and West Ham floundered but were undone from simple straight long balls in behind the defence. Why Scarles was started as a right back \u2013 only Nuno will know but he disappeared, hooked at half time. Very Lopetegui-like disarray. Which is a pretty damning indictment of Espirito Santo\u2019s first half set up.<\/p>\n

Most Read on West Ham News<\/p>\n

This first half set up and performance was classic Lopetegui chaos: Players out of position, others chasing their tails<\/p>\n

Making the changes at half time and moving to a back five at times meant that the \u2018midfield\u2019 was solely Tomas Soucek at times: West Ham looked at sixes and sevens. Couldn\u2019t fathom it out, to be honest. Evidently, neither could the players.<\/p>\n

Brentford fumbled and failed to score only through their own ineffectiveness. 20 efforts on goal from the visitors said it all.<\/p>\n

Callum Marshall thrown on for forty minutes made little impact and another odd change saw Rodriguez appear. Fans poured out from 70 minutes as West Ham failed to make any impression whatsoever. Mavropanos crawled off with a leg injury and \u00a0Summerville started limping: the Hammers were down to nine and a half with no substitutes left to use. Another chance curled an inch wide of Areola\u2019s goal as somehow the score stayed at \u00a00 \u2013 1. Carnage: The most one sided one \u2013 nil you\u2019d ever want to watch.<\/p>\n

Jensen finally settled it when he fired into the roof of the next after 94 minutes \u2013 which was fully deserved. The visitors were head, shoulders and torso above West Ham, and I\u2019m secretly very glad I didn\u2019t pay good money to have to slog to and fro from Stratford station in the rain to watch that.<\/p>\n

Relegation form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The team selection took everyone by surprise: None of the trio of returning International defenders got a start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-228913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}