West Ham 4 Wolves 0: Jarrod Bowen, Tomas Soucek and Sebastien Haller punish visitors for first Hammers win of season
JARROD BOWEN comes from a family of Herefordshire farmers and spent pre-season running in his uncle’s potato fields.
Yet the £22million signing from Hull, who has certainly found his feet in the Premier League, scored twice against Wolves as West Ham displayed some green shoots of recovery.
It has been a typically traumatic couple of weeks at a club which always seemed to be locked in a permanent state of crisis.
A terrible 2-0 opening day loss to Newcastle was followed by the daylight robbery of a 2-1 loss at Arsenal.
And to top things off, manager David Moyes, Issa Diop and Josh Cullen tested positive for coronavirus before the 5-1 win Carabao Cup over Hull.
Yet having prepared for the game on Zoom, Moyes watched the match on TV while communicating with Stuart Pearce in the dugout via the telephone.
With Bowen’s two goals followed by a header from Tomas Soucek which deflected off Raul Jimenez and an injury-time effort from substitute Seb Haller, it was a surprisingly comfortable victory.
While there has been a fair amount of doom and gloom at West Ham this season, the performance - helped by Bowen’s courage and flair going forward - illustrated that this team should avoid a fight at the wrong end of the table.
There was also an extremely encouraging positive performance from midfielder Declan Rice, who has also been the victim of some heavy criticism already this season.
However, Wolves were guilty of some unusually shambolic defending and boss Nuno Espirito Santo was clearly livid afterwards.
Most read in Football
It was also a rough Wolves debut for £27.6m Barcelona defender Nelson Semedo who was substituted at 3-0 and he clearly needs to work harder at wing-back.
Although this was still not as bad as his final game for Barca - the 8-2 battering to Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
You can see why Semedo and the rest of his Wolves team were annoyed with the manner of West Ham’s opening goal but it was still a quality strike from Bowen.
Rice swept up some the danger and played a good pass towards Michail Antonio just inside the home half. Antonio was then upended by Willy Boly and he fell on top of the visiting defender.
As the two opposing players appeared to be apologising to each other, Pablo Fornals used his brain with a quickly-taken free-kick although it was five yards away from where the foul took place.
The ball stopped rolling a split second before Fornals took the set piece on the halfway line towards Bowen.
And he carried the ball for 20 yards as Romain Saiss backed off while attempting to stop Bowen from getting the ball on his favoured left foot.
Yet Bowen did just that as he cut inside and curled an outstanding shot into the corner beyond Rui Patricio.
The Wolves keeper kept his team in the game with saves from Antonio and Soucek while Fornals missed a sitter and at half-time, you wondered whether these misses would bite the Hammers on the backside.
Instead, they took their opponents apart.
Just as Wolves started to cause a few problems, Bowen got his second although once again, there was an element for fortune.
Antonio showed good awareness by picking out Fornals and while his effort struck the post, it fell perfectly for Bowen to score with a volley.
The third came with the help of a deflection off Jimenez but Soucek did well to make space for himself to meet Aaron Cresswell’s corner with a glancing header. It seems slightly harsh this has been put down as an own goal.
Had the stadium been fiul, Bowen would have received a standing ovation but instead, he received just a ripple of applause from the smattering of people inside the stadium when being replaced by Mark Noble in the 88th minute.
Another substitute, French striker Haller, then scored deep into injury-time with a header following an outstanding cross from Arthur Masuaku.
After scoring, Haller looked pretty sheepish although for a player costing £45m, you would be expecting him to score a few more this season.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Following the trip to Everton in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday, Moyes will be allowed back at training ahead of the trip to Leicester on Sunday.
Although after this surprising win over one of the Premier League’s better teams, superstitious types at West Ham would probably be happy.
