Just 45 minutes of London Stadium action summed up West Ham’s whole season since Michail Antonio’s well documented December car crash: Playing without an experienced centre-forward was put into mammoth focus yesterday as Niclas Fullkrug strode onto the pitch as a second half substitute.
Bullying defenders, acting as a target then, to hold and lay off the ball to attackers running beyond him, Fullkrug showed every year of his experience to highlight exactly why West Ham have struggled to put the ball into the opposition net this season and why it is absolutely imperative that this summer transfer window brings in further frontman reinforcements.
The goal which equalised for West Ham was a classic old fashioned number nine header in from a Ward-Prowse corner. How many Premier League goals have been scored in that exact same manner, I wonder, but a type denied to West Ham for most of the season owing to the largely self-inflicted striker crisis: Surely now Graham Potter won’t try and play just two attacking midfielders up-front on their own.
Fullkrug’s pushes, nudges and layoffs were nothing new for him – that is how he’s spent his career playing but for West Ham supporters it was like rainfall after a six month drought. And enough for Fullkrug to wrestle Jarrod Bowen for the man-of – the – match award but after that first half, the bar wasn’t very high.
