West Ham fight back at Brentford but fail to quell Julen Lopetegui discontent

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Evening Standard

·28 September 2024

West Ham fight back at Brentford but fail to quell Julen Lopetegui discontent

Radical changes pay off but new Hammers boss remains under growing pressure to end winless run

A rare point against bogey team Brentford would normally have been cause for positivity, but wins are the currency right now for off-colour West Ham.

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Julen Lopetegui can have few complaints about his side’s failure to triumph in this game, which ended as a 1-1 draw and contained a slightly alarming lack of quality in the final third from both sides.

There were gasps of disbelief when Bryan Mbeumo wound a side-foot volley into the top corner as early as 37 seconds in. This, though, has quickly become Brentford’s trademark and should have shocked few.

It was a carbon copy of the volley he struck in last weekend’s 3-1 defeat at Tottenham, scored after 23 seconds, which itself was only one second later than Yoane Wissa had notched the previous weekend to stun Manchester City in what was an eventual 2-1 loss for the Bees.

Brentford became the first team ever to score in the first minute of three straight Premier League games. It was the only incredible thing to happen in an otherwise wholly ordinary game of football.

Conceding so early in an important fixture was tough for West Ham to stomach. It has been a poor start to the season, with the hiring of Lopetegui as manager and a total revamp of the squad yet to pay dividends in terms of points on the board.

Their desperate need for a victory to silence the discontent was not felt in the first half, though. Rather than rally once Mbeumo had netted, the Hammers plodded to half-time somewhat - Tomas Soucek’s wild effort over the crossbar the pinnacle of their attacking output.

Lopetegui felt that change was needed, and off came Emerson and Mohammed Kudus as Carlos Soler and Konstantinos Mavropanos replaced them.

Those drastic and far from like-for-like changes felt a little radical, but they worked for West Ham. With 54 minutes on the clock and a melee ensuing in the Brentford box, Michail Antonio’s mishit downward volley was steered past Mark Flekken by Soucek, the Czech coming up with yet another crucial goal at the Hammers’ time of great need.

There was a feeling of deadlock about the following period of the match, no lack of intent from the two sides but a sense that one point was at least satisfactory. Certainly for Brentford, this was a valuable draw to add to an impressive start to the campaign.

A raft of substitutions broke up the rhythm of the final 15 minutes and the game ended 1-1, a result which supercharges the importance of three points from their next game for West Ham in particular.

Brentford keep plodding along nicely, but Ipswich at home next weekend appears now as though it can only bring victory if West Ham and Lopetegui are to overcome the noise.