0-1, min. 56, Wilson. 0-2, min. 88, Hendrick.

West Ham United 0-2 Newcastle United: Poor showing from the Hammers might leave them without points until November

The Hammers have started their Premier League season with a uninspiring loss at the London Stadium.

West Ham United 0-2 Newcastle United: Poor showing from the Hammers might leave them without points until November
(Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images)
alan-rzepa
By Alan Rzepa

After a fairly decent pre-season period, West Ham United have come to their first Premier League game of the season against Newcastle United with a lot of hope to start the season off on a front foot.

Unfortunately, Callum Wilson scored in yet another game against the Hammers in which looked to be the only goal of the game before Jeff Hendrick's strike set the final result.

  • Story of the game

The first chance of the game came to the visitors, as within the opening five minutes Callum Wilson could've opened the scoring following a good cross from Jamal Lewis, but his header just missed the goal.

Ten minutes later the Hammers could've opened the scoring themselves, but Angelo Ogbonna's header hit the bar and went out of play.

Wilson had another chance shortly after but his effort went wide.

After that chance West Ham have woken up and created two good oportunities in just the same amount of minutes.

First Michail Antonio shot straight at Karl Darlow after making a very good run through Newcastle's defence and then a great cross from Ryan Fredericks was nearly converted by Tomas Soucek.

Instantly after, the Magpies were close themselves through Jonjo Shelvey and ex-West Ham Andy Carroll, but their respective efforts  were off-target.

As the game showed no signs of slowing down, the hosts hit the bar again, this time through Pablo Fornals following another good cross from Fredericks.

And it was the right-back who was easily West Ham's man of the first half as after a very poor back pass from Fornals, he managed to keep up with Allain Saint-Maximin and stop him from having an easy run at Łukasz Fabiański.

After the break the game become a little more stale until the 57th minute when Javier Manquillo's deflected cross dropped at the head of Jeff Hendrick, who put it onto Callum Wilson and the Englishman got to it it before Fabiański to score his eight goal in just as many games against West Ham.

With his first touch of the ball Sebastien Haller could've put West Ham back on level terms but Hendrick decided to help out his teammate and save the ball with his arm, which the referee Stuart Atwell found well within the reason of fair-play.

In the 88th minute Aaron Cresswell despite standing directly in front of Hendrick simply failed to close the winger down, which resulted in a second goal for the Magpies.

  • Takeaways

Aaron Cresswell needs a nice relaxing holiday

After a very poor end of the season and even worse pre-season, the former England international has yet again been given a first-team start by David Moyes.

To no surprises, he's yet again been one of the worst on the pitch, and at clear fault for the second goal as he failed to close down Jeff Hendrick despite standing directly in front of him.

What is even more surprising is how Arthur Masuaku, despite scoring and assisting in a pre-season game against Wycombe Wanderers, wasn't even named among the substitutes.

But if Cresswell keeps playing like that, I will be the one going on a holiday.

David Moyes is scared of making substitutes

This game is just another proof that the Scot doesn't want or need to make substitutes before the game goes down the drain.

Having gone to the half-time break at 0-0, he had the perfect opportunity to sub on Haller and Anderson as West Ham were clearly out of the game and not creating enough chances.

It took him 22 minutes and one goal from Callum Wilson to finally bring on players, and another 17 minutes and another goal to bring on Felipe Anderson, the team's most creative player, who was instantly involved in creating a good chance for Andriy Yarmolenko.