da betcris： After following up their impressive 3-0 win against Southampton at the London Stadium on March 31 with a 1-1 draw against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, West Ham United had the perfect chance to move a step closer to securing their Premier League spot for another season when they hosted Stoke City on Monday night.
da betsson： Three successive losses by a three-goal margin had put the east London outfit back into trouble ahead of their encounter against the 18th-placed Saints last month, and the south coast outfit would have smelt blood after a handful of supporters invaded the London Stadium pitch in the 3-0 defeat to Burnley just a few weeks previously.
However, they cruised to a straightforward 3-0 success against Mark Hughes’ men – leading by that scoreline at half-time – and they took that form into the clash away at the 2017 top flight champions Chelsea as Javier Hernandez’s goal ensured they took a point back with them across the capital.
That draw left them on 34 points with six matches remaining, and manager David Moyes should have been confident of seeing off a 19th-placed Potters side who had the worst away record in the Premier League having taken just eight points from 16 matches on the road.
The Scot had started with a 3-4-2-1 system against Saints despite being without Hernandez, Manuel Lanzini and Andy Carroll through injury, with the former returning as a substitute and getting on the score-sheet at Stamford Bridge.
Despite his goal and the absence of Michail Antonio through injury against Paul Lambert’s men on Monday, the Mexico international had to settle for spot on the substitutes’ bench along with the returning Lanzini and Carroll, which perhaps would have confused the home faithful considering this appeared to be a match they could win if they attacked their struggling opponents as they did with Southampton a couple of weeks earlier.
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Edimilson Fernandes and Joao Mario were named in the starting XI behind Marko Arnautovic for the second game running, but it surely would have made sense to have at least Hernandez and Lanzini in the team too, even if the latter was returning from a couple of matches on the sidelines because of an injury issue.
You want to have your best and biggest players starting hugely important games like this one, but it didn’t happen for whatever reason and the London Stadium faithful’s anger with their manager on his selection was quickly expressed on Twitter.
It was negative in all honesty and while he perhaps wanted to stay loyal to the players that had done so well at Stamford Bridge and didn’t want to lose to Stoke given it would have left the gap between them and the bottom three at just four points with fixtures against Arsenal, Manchester City and Everton still to come, he played it far too cautiously.
When Peter Crouch gave the visitors the lead in the 79th minute it appeared as though the 56-year-old’s decision not to take a risk had backfired spectacularly, but the introduction of Hernandez, Lanzini and Carroll from the substitutes’ bench seemed to make the difference with the latter firing home a volley from Aaron Cresswell’s cross in the last minute to rescue a point.
It was a confusing decision by Moyes given that his contract is due to run out at the end of the season and the fact he is surely looking to impress the board and the supporters in order to extend his stay with the club, but perhaps the potential implications of a loss got the better of him and in turn showed that he isn’t the right man to take the east London outfit forwards.
The former Everton and Manchester United boss will be anxiously looking on when Southampton face Leicester City at the King Power Stadium on Thursday night, knowing that a win for the Saints would leave his men just four points above the drop zone with a run-in that looks tough – at least on paper.
While it may seem like a crucial point gained right now, it could be two points dropped that Moyes and West Ham live to regret come what May.