Fiorentina impressed but David Moyes’s side dug deep thanks to their relentless captain who is expected to leave this summerDeclan Rice could never have dreamed this. Almost a decade after being released as a teenager by Chelsea, West Ham’s captain and talisman has the fairytale ending he so dearly craved.Until Jarrod Bowen’s dramatic late winning goal that prompted David Moyes to embark on a David Pleat-esque jig across the turf at the Eden Arena, winning a first major European trophy since the days of Bobby Moore and company in 1965 had seemed the least likely scenario against Fiorentina. The Italian side dominated possession thanks to the outstanding Sofyan Amrabat despite falling behind to Saïd Benrahma’s penalty. But it is a...
No team with talented players such as James Maddison, Harvey Barnes and Youri Tielemans should be this badAs the clock ticked past 80 minutes the King Power Stadium, with Leicester beating West Ham but hostage entirely to events at Goodison Park, it felt fitting that this should be one of those relegations sung to its rest by ghosts of other games, of goals unscored, energy waves, rumours, the Mexican wave of death.Several times through those final 10 minutes the ground was gripped by sudden contortions of false joy, leaping, roaring sections of crowd lifted by news of fake survival, reality-lag, non-redemption. If Bournemouth score a non-goal and nobody tells the King Power it doesn’t exist: is that non-goal still a...
Everton have relegation battle in their own hands, Aston Villa fans face a dilemma and there will be emotional farewells galoreFor the third time in 29 years, Everton’s Premier League status is on the line on the final day at Goodison Park although, unlike against Wimbledon in 1994 or Coventry in 1998, survival is in their own hands. The task sounds straightforward enough: beat a Bournemouth team with nothing to play for and a 70th consecutive season in the top flight is guaranteed. Everton, though, have an aversion to the straightforward. Sean Dyche does not have a decent striker available with Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who has been integral to the team’s recent improvement, hamstrung again. Unless Vitaliy Mykolenko recovers from a...
The Hammers have struggled in the league but would they really ditch a manager who has taken them to a first European final since 1976?The message coming out of West Ham at the start of the week was there would be no decision on David Moyes’s future until the end of the season. Yet by the time Pablo Fornals was beating two AZ Alkmaar defenders and running through to score in the 94th minute at the AFAS Stadion on Thursday night, it seemed absurd that anyone could possibly want to replace Moyes.They were all off the bench when Fornals drove his low shot into the net, their reward for not treating the Europa Conference League as an inconvenience being a...
Poor form of Erik ten Hag’s side since late February has meant they could miss out on next season’s elite club competitionThey’re behind you. No really, they are. For Manchester United, what had looked not so long ago like a gentle jog to the line in the Premier League, maybe even – really, this wasn’t so long ago – some kind of title challenge, has now become a cliffhanger. We have jeopardy here.Liverpool’s victory over Brentford on Saturday means we have a classic two-horse run-off to the line. And really, this could go any way from here after a limp, muddled and generally uncomfortable 1-0 defeat at the London Stadium, during which relegation-haunted West Ham looked by far the more...