Substitute Andy Carroll grabbed a late winner as West Ham bested a Southampton side that were high on confidence after a crushing 4-0 win over Arsenal on the weekend.
The win for the home team could hardly have been said to have been convincing though, with the visitors dominating the first-half and were unfortunate to only take a slim lead into the break, through a Carl Jenkinson own goal. There was a certain measure of fortune in both of the Hammers’ goals, the first a ball which was tackled into a falling Michail Antonio and then magically looped over Maarten Stekelenburg, the second coming from a deflection off the crossbar which fell kindly for an unmarked Carroll.
Despite the lack of decisive play in the win, Slaven Bilić will be looked to spur his side to further triumphs now that an eight game Premier League winless streak is over. Ronald Koeman, on the other hand, will be looking to recapture the form that saw them trounce a dangerous Arsenal team.
West Ham finish 2015 in the top-half
Despite their lack of points in the last handful of outings West Ham still finish the year in a comfortable position, sitting in seventh place at the season’s halfway mark. With a few players returning from injury Bilić will be confident of taking his side back to their early 2015-16 form. Key to a revival and strong finish to the campaign will be the manager finding a flow up front again, with goals hard to come by in recent times. Things certainly looked clumsy at times in this game and the two-goal haul was the first time the side managed to score multiple times in a match since their late October win against Chelsea.
6 – West Ham are unbeaten in their last six Premier League home games, but four of these have been draws (W2 D4 L0). Grind.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) December 28, 2015
Koeman’s lack of rotation does not pay dividends
After the impressive win at St. Mary’s on Boxing Day, Koeman said he would find it difficult to drop any players from the team that, at that point, had one of the lowest goals against tallies in the League. In the end he made just two changes to the side and it seems as though the gamble did not work for the Dutch manager. It is hard to say what effect the tight turnaround had on both teams, but the Saints definitely failed to replicate the supreme form from their last fixture. Fatigue certainly seems as though it could have been a factor with the travelling team, starting the game brightly but throwing it away in the second-half.
Carroll and Lanzini the Difference
Down a goal and being convincingly outplayed, Bilić decided to throw Carroll and Manuel Lanzini into the fray and it seemed to make the difference in the latter stages. The big body of the Englishman and work on the ball of Lanzini seemed to throw-off the Saints’ defence and allowed the Hammers to play themselves back into the game. Carroll spurned a few good chances before his winner, but definitively added a different edge to a recently flat West Ham attack.
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