On their first game of 2017, West Ham United came up against Manchester United at the London Stadium after a disappointing 1-0 loss against Leicester City at The King Power Stadium.
The game started very well for both teams and it was end-to-end football until Sofiane Feghouli was sent off in the 15th minute for a challenge on Phil Jones. Many pundits and fans have said that it was the completely wrong decision by Mike Dean and it was more of a foul by Jones than it was Feghouli. This sending off killed the positive attitude that West Ham started with and were left to try and defend a 0-0 stalemate for 75 minutes.
Unfortunately for the home side, they couldn’t hold keep it at 0-0 after Juan Mata scored in the 63rd minute with a nice finish after some great work by youngster Marcus Rashford. The deficit got even bigger in the 78th minute when Zlatan Ibrahimovic comfortably volleyed home past Darren Randolph. There was a huge call for offside against the Swede, who joined Manchester United on a free transfer from PSG in the summer and has scored 13 goals already this season.
Overall, it was a frustrating game for the Hammers as they looked like the better team before the sending off. Even with 10 men, West Ham played very well and were very unfortunate not to come out of this game with at least a point.
Here are my player ratings –
