West Ham scrape past Wolves to earn a massive three points in their hunt for European football.

David Moyes was very vocal about how important a strong start would be if West Ham were to beat Wolves. Unfortunately, quite the opposite happened. For the first 20 minutes of the match, the home side absolutely dominated the ball with the Hammers only having 20% possession. 

Around the thirty minute mark, Wolves were awarded a penalty for a missed timed Emerson tackle on Ait-Nouri, which Pablo Sarabia converted. 

Unfortunately, things did not look good heading into half-time. West Ham had barely been able to string 5 passes together and, as a result, created very few chances – change was needed.

Uncharacteristically, Moyes made two substitutions at the start of the second-half. Ben Johnson and Michail Antonio replaced Vladimir Coufal and Tomas Soucek. Right from the very off, it was clear the duo were going to make a big impact. The No.9 in particular put in an excellent performance and caused the Wolves backline untold problems. 

West Ham thought they had found an equaliser through a brilliant Kudus cross on to the head of Emerson, but the goal was questionably disallowed for a supposed foul in the build up.

Potentially worst of all, Jarrod Bowen went off injured with discomfort in his hip – a massive loss for the Hammers.

However, they wouldn’t have to wait too much longer to bring themselves level as once again Emerson was causing problems for Wolverhampton, and forced a handball from Max Kilman to win a penalty. Lucas Paqueta, who hadn’t been great up to that point, coolly put the ball past Sá.

12 minutes later, a corner from James Ward-Prowse miraculously went directly into the back of the net and what makes it better is that it looks like he meant it!

Heartbreakingly, Wolves equalised in the 99th minute but, after so many poor decisions that have gone against them in 2024, West Ham finally had a VAR decision go their way and the goal was ruled out for offside.

Heading into the game, the bare minimum had to be a win. As usual, West Ham did not make it easy for themselves and it certainly wasn’t pretty, but their much improved second-half display was enough to take all the points back to East London.