For most of this season, the possibility of West Ham United being relegated has felt not just real, but likely. It could still happen, but this was the performance of a team playing with conviction and cohesion, and looking good enough to stay up with something to spare. A victory against the league’s bottom club might not seem all that impressive, but it was the manner of the performance, and the atmosphere in the stadium, which made relegation feel hard to imagine.
Two goals apiece from Taty Castellanos and Konstantinos Mavropanos, one player signed by Nuno Espírito Santo and another reborn under his management, flattened Wolverhampton Wanderers and pulled West Ham two points clear of the bottom three.
If West Ham do stay up, there is a two-in-three chance it will be at the expense of one of Nuno’s former clubs. Not Wolves, who with respect were doomed even before this capitulation, but very possibly Nottingham Forest or Tottenham Hotspur. With this result, the latter club dropped into the bottom three for the first time all season, and indeed the first time at a meaningful stage in any season since 2009. Roberto De Zerbi already knew the size of the job on his hands, but seeing his team fall below the waterline brings the peril of their position into sharp focus.
Nuno has done a remarkable job with this team. The early returns weren’t promising and when West Ham lost 3-0 to Wolves in the reverse fixture in January, he seemed to be on the brink and the fans were mutinous. Since then, West Ham have taken 18 points from 12 matches; in the same period, Tottenham have won only four points. The gap between them is narrow, but the trajectories of these two teams are wildly diverging.
Wolves had actually made a positive start, playing with a confidence which belied their almost hopeless predicament. Barely two minutes had elapsed when Jean-Ricner Bellegarde slid a ball across the goalmouth, where Hugo Bueno was lurking and for a moment looked certain to ram the ball in, only to be foiled by a superb piece of defending by Kyle Walker-Peters.
Gradually, West Ham grew into the game and after 13 minutes they could have scored following a move of real craft. Jarrod Bowen and Mateus Fernandes exchanged passes before the Portuguese midfielder popped a lovely little pass through to Crysencio Summerville, whose finish was rushed and high. There was some restlessness in the stadium, and it wasn’t helped by a poor mistake from El Hadji Malick Diouf, who sloppily lost possession deep in his own half to Ladislav Krejci, who picked out Adam Armstrong. The striker fired over on the turn.
Mavropanos’s fine header opens the scoring at the London Stadium John Walton/PA
West Ham came close when Mavropanos nodded the ball into the stride of Bowen, whose first-time shot had the sting taken out of it by Krejci’s excellent block. But it was that same combination that would strike gold for West Ham, puncturing the tension just before half-time. This time it was Mavropanos in the middle and Bowen, given a second bite at the cherry after Wolves only half-cleared a corner, with the delivery. It was a gorgeous cross and a perfect header from the unmarked Greek, meeting the ball with a sharp twist of the neck and propelling it beautifully past the hopeless José Sá.
With the wind in their sails, West Ham nearly doubled their lead before the break. It was a nice pass from Castellanos in transition, releasing Pablo in the inside-right channel. The ball was going away from goal, the angle narrowing, but Pablo’s shot was crisp and true and very nearly sneaked past Sá at his near post. In the end it was a fine save from the Portuguese.
With eight minutes gone in the second half, there was a wild passage where both teams came within a whisker of scoring the second goal on three occasions in quick succession. First Angel Gomes’s brilliant free kick struck the post, then West Ham countered and a communication breakdown from the Wolves defenders on halfway presented the ball to Summerville, with Sá out of his net, but the winger couldn’t hit the target with his chip. Then, for good measure, Bowen ran at Krejci, turned him inside out, and with a mass cheer forming in the throats of the home fans, his delightful shot pinged off the far post.
Castellanos squeezes his shot away to make it 2-0 to the home side despite being under pressure Reuters
Then the home fans were on their feet again for a moment of absolute magic, inspired by Nuno’s two January signings. Summerville started by stealing the ball rapaciously on halfway, then Castellanos and Pablo took over. The Argentinian carried the ball forward and slipped it to Pablo, who returned it with a sumptuous behind-his-standing-leg flick. Castellanos, under pressure from a Wolves defender, got just enough on his shot to beat Sá.
Now the crowd was in raptures and the West Ham press was rampant. Almost from kick-off, Bowen stole the ball again and ripped forward. Castellanos’s shot was similar to the one he had just scored with, slightly scuffed as defenders closed in, but it couldn’t have been better placed, flicking the inside of the post as it beat Sá. There was time for Mavropanos to get his second, hooking in a back-post volley from a corner.
There is still a significant challenge ahead — West Ham have a tricky run-in — but the ovation at full-time told of a team and a fanbase suddenly in tune with each other again. West Ham fans will go to bed dreaming of Castellanos, Mavropanos, and perhaps an annus mirabilis for a team who no longer look doomed.
West Ham United (4-4-1-1): M Hermansen; K Walker-Peters, K Mavropanos, A Disasi, EM Diouf; J Bowen, M Fernandes (S Magassa 85), T Soucek, C Summerville (A Traoré 78); Pablo Felipe (F Potts 78); T Castellanos (C Wilson 82). Booked: Fernandes, Castellanos.
Wolverhampton Wanderers (3-5-1-1): J Sá; Y Mosquera (T Arokodare 71), S Bueno, L Krejci; J Tchatchoua, J-R Bellegarde (M Mané 61), André, J Gomes (T Edozie 85), H Bueno; A Gomes (R Gomes 61); A Armstrong (H Hwang 71). Booked: Bellegarde, Mosquera.