Latest Opinion

There are football matches you lose and feel hard done by. There are football matches you lose because you were comprehensively outplayed.

And then there are West Ham matches, where the club appears determined to explore every available method of making a perfectly manageable evening unnecessarily complicated.




This was the third-round Carabao Cup tie at the London Stadium, and West Ham went out 3–2 to Fulham after twice recovering from going behind.

Fulham took the lead after 13 minutes through Rodrigo Muniz, which was inconvenient but hardly fatal. West Ham responded through Morato three minutes later, suggesting that perhaps, just occasionally, the football gods might allow us a quiet evening. Naturally, they were only winding us up.

Cesar Palacios restored Fulham's advantage before Pablo equalised in first-half stoppage time. Two-all at the interval: entertaining, mildly chaotic and exactly the sort of scoreline that makes a West Ham supporter wonder whether to pour another drink or hide behind the sofa.

The second half was less frantic, but not necessarily more reassuring. West Ham had opportunities to take control, but the finishing department remained governed by the longstanding club principle that if something can be made difficult, it should be.

Then came the 78th minute. Oscar Bobb, introduced from the bench, produced the decisive moment, exploiting a mistake from Mo Kante before finishing to make it 3–2.




And so West Ham were out.

There were positives, which is always useful because otherwise one has to admit that one watched the whole thing voluntarily. The Hammers showed considerable resilience, twice coming from behind, and several of the players given an opportunity by rotation showed enough to suggest that the squad isn't entirely composed of men who wandered into the wrong dressing room.

The problem was that Fulham possessed just enough quality to punish the moments when West Ham became casual. Bobb's winner was particularly irritating because it came from exactly the sort of error that makes a manager stare into the middle distance while supporters begin composing strongly-worded emails.

There was also a poignant moment before kick-off, with the club paying tribute to former goalkeeper Ludek Miklosko, who had recently died after cancer. Tomas Soucek carried a No. 1 shirt to the goal in his honour.




So, what to make of it?

West Ham lost a cup tie but didn't disgrace themselves. They were lively, competitive and capable of scoring goals, but ultimately too generous at the wrong moments. Fulham, meanwhile, did what cup sides are supposed to do: survived the chaos, found the winning goal and went home with the trophy-shaped carrot still dangling somewhere in the distance.

For West Ham, the Carabao Cup has once again performed its traditional function: briefly raising expectations before quietly removing them with a blunt instrument.

Still, there's always next year. And the FA Cup. And, presumably, another character-building evening...

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