After successfully progressing to the play-off round of the Europa League, West Ham have their eyes set on the Europa League group stages. The Hammers set out on Wednesday morning to Bucharest, the Romanian capital. From there they travelled an hour south to Giurgiu where they were set to face Astra the day after.
With a hard start to the Premier League season away to Chelsea no one knew what kind of squad Bilic would take. In the end, he took a fairly decent side however not the best that we have.
West Ham started the game strongly, they had many chances most of them coming from corners with various saves from the Astra keeper and a save off of the line from one of their defenders, however, the opening goal came late on in the first half after West Ham were awarded a penalty for handball. Of course, there was only one man that was going to step up to the spot and that was Mark Noble. Unsurprisingly he converted with ease and the Hammers led at the break.
West Ham looked very comfortable in the second half and as Astra pushed on late in the game Marcus Browne had a chance to break, he ran from halfway and as he came up to the keeper he squared the ball to Antonio however he was always on the stretch and Antonio failed to convert to put the game to bed.
Unfortunately, this cost the Hammers as 93 seconds later the hosts equalised from a corner. The game ended 1-1 and now it is all to play for in the reverse fixture in London.
Here we look at what we learned.
