West Ham 1-2 Manchester United
by Paul Donovan
at London Stadium

WEST HAM manager David Moyes accepted responsibility for the penalty miss that cost his side a point, after sending on substitute Mark Noble to take the spot kick.

A pulsating game between West Ham and Manchester United at the London Stadium reached a crescendo in the closing minutes, with what proved an exquisite winner from former West Ham loanee Jesse Lingard.

The home team though could have salvaged a point when Luke Shaw was judged to have handled an Andriy Yarmolenko cross, but the resulting penalty was tamely hit at Manchester United keeper David De Gea by Noble.

It looked like a cute move from home manager David Moyes, sending on Noble just as the penalty was awarded in injury time, but all to no avail.

West Ham started the game well, moving the ball around quickly, with Jarrod Bowen and Said Benrahma a constant threat.

Bowen was denied twice, first by defender Aaron Wan Bissaka and then by the legs of De Gea.

However, on the half hour Bowen worked the ball across the penalty area for Benrahma to strike home helped by a deflection off United defender Raphael Varane.

The lead though only lasted for five minutes before a Bruno Fernandes cross was met by Cristiano Ronaldo, whose shot was saved by Lukasz Fabianski but rolled back to the returning United star to ram home.

Fernandes had been unlucky minutes earlier to see a swerving cross bounce back off the post.    

West Ham though had another chance before half-time when an Aaron Cresswell cut back was put over by the incoming Nikola Vlasic.

The second half saw more end to end football, with West Ham lucky to escape when a Pablo Fornals misplaced pass fell to Fernandes, who put Ronaldo in, but he shot straight at Fabianski.

The final crescendo game when the returning Lingard found space in the area to bend the ball home. Then came Noble’s miss.  

Moyes will have nightmares over that one, especially as West Ham’s outstanding captain Declan Rice was all set to take the penalty, as the dice was rolled and the former captain came on to take over… and miss.

Moyes accepted the responsibility for the penalty decision, declaring “he (Noble) said he was good and because of his record I thought he was the one most suited to take it.”

He felt it was a proper game. 

“I think we played well and did an awful lot of good things and had some really top performances. We tried to go toe to toe and in truth could be talking about a draw.”