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MOTD: West Ham United 3-3 Arsenal

By on April 9, 2016

Within the wider narrative of Arsenal’s Premier League season, another disappointing, potentially fatal blow to their title hopes stuck to the script.  First, there was blossoming hope as the Gunners strode to an early 2-0 lead and then great anguish as Andy Carroll’s unlikely hat-track within seven minutes on either side of the half propelled West Ham United back into the lead.  And finally, a compromise of sorts as Arsenal clawed back a draw, although single point does little for either team.

Arsenal now sit ten points behind league leaders Leicester with six games to play and with just two wins in their last six league games, Arsene Wenger’s men are limping over the line. They have self-destructed far too many times this season and this was a textbook example.
“Third in the league, 59 points – that’s not where we want to be,” Wenger said. “We make it much more difficult to win the championship but we have to keep going and hope.

“You never know what can happen. You have to look behind us, clubs are chasing us and we have to be serious and focus. When you see the game that’s one of the places you feel guilty you dropped points.”

West Ham, meanwhile, remain frustratingly on the wrong side of the two Manchester clubs despite their fantastic turnaround.  They face Manchester United in the FA Cup quarterfinals on Wednesday and Slaven Bilic is looking forward to the matchup.

“We are so confident. I am proud of everything. We were spectacular,” he gushed at the final whistle, per the BBC.

Hat-trick hero Carroll is even keeping a Euro 2016 call-up in the back of his head.  “I have to keep that in the back of my head, but I have to play each game here and see how it goes,” he told BT Sport.

He gave the Hammers to the steel to turn around the match on the brink of the half and his strong, physical performance caused chaos in Arsenal’s comparatively spineless defense.

Inside eight minutes, it was the fastest Premier League hat-trick this season and the fifth fastest of all time.

West Ham could have won it, but Bilic was left fuming after Manuel Lanzini incorrectly saw an early headed goal disallowed for offside.  Dimitri Payet also had a goal chalked off in the second half, but West Ham could have no such complaints the second time around.

Nineteen-year-old youngster Alex Iwobi was among the few bright spots for Arsenal and he has shown a startling grit and character up front.  He assisted both of Arsenal’s first half goals, first slipping in Mesut Ozil down the left side of the box and then putting Alexis Sanchez in on goal with a peachy dink of a pass.

Yet Arsenal’s defensive insufficiencies resurfaced at the worst possible moment as Carroll rose up at the far post to header Aaron Cresswell’s fantastic cross home on the brink of the half.  Moments later, Carroll found another goal to pull West Ham level.  Arsenal afforded him far too much space on the end of Mark Noble’s clipped cross and although Carroll’s original effort was blocked, he buried the rebound with a smashing scissor kick.

On the other side of the half, he rose up above his marker to head another far-post cross into the back of the net.

West Ham dug in late on, and Lanzini denied Nacho Monreal with a goal-line clearance.  They were considerably more solid when Bilic switched to a back-four, but they couldn’t hold on.  Laurent Koscielny converted in the seventieth minute to add a slightly frustrating twist to a pulsating match for both teams.

Homepage photo credit: Brian Minkoff-London Pixels (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.