Sunderland 2 - 2 West HamLate Fabio Borini goal earns Sunderland draw with West Ham
Home team scorersWahbi Khazri 26
Fabio Borini 90
Away team scorersAndre Ayew 5
James Collins 47
Slaven Bilic sometimes becomes so frustrated with his West Ham players that he resorts to breaking dressing room tables during half time team talks.
The Croatian jokes that he sources replacements at Ikea so the visiting team bus may well have had to take a detour via the Swedish emporium’s Gateshead super-store on its journey to Newcastle airport on Saturday night.
With Sunderland’s recalled - and highly impressive - Wahbi Khazri, equalising just before the interval, West Ham lost their grip on the game - along with a chance to utterly banish any lingering relegation fears, however remote.
If it turned into a bad afternoon for Bilic, things looked up slightly for David Moyes, with an improved performance taking the sting out of early calls for his head from the stands. That said a point is far from sufficient to rescue the division’s basement team from relegation.
It took 35 seconds for Sunderland’s Lee Cattermole to be booked - after fouling Andre Ayew- and five minutes for West Ham to assume the lead. When Javier Manquillo generously offered the advancing Sam Byram acres of space down the visiting right, the full back’s deep cross found Andy Carroll.
No matter that Carroll’s slightly miscued cross-shot hardly represented his finest moment, the ball fell conveniently for Ayew to place a shot just inside a post.
Soon afterwards the ground echoed to chants of “We want Moyes out.” It was the first hint of such rebellion this season and felt significant but the mutinous mood mellowed when Khazri equalised, thereby scoring Sunderland’s first goal in eight games.
Persistently, and puzzlingly, sidelined by Moyes this season, the gifted Tunisia winger was recalled, returning to an interesting, somewhat politically freighted team-sheet which saw Lamine Kone - theoretically Sunderland’s best defender and a long-standing West Ham transfer target - dropped to the bench.
Khazri takes a mean dead ball and, having won a corner courtesy of a clever run, he took it himself, applying such extreme whip and curl to the ball that it evaded all comers before arching over Darren Randolph en route to the bottom corner of his net. As skilful as that leveller was, West Ham could maybe have done with having a defender stationed at the far post. Khazri, after all, is a creator who readily reveals: “I like to shoot from corners.”
Anxious to remind everyone that he takes a pretty decent corner himself, Robert Snodgrass whipped one in with that wonderful left foot of his and, having dodged Jason Denayer, James Collins rose high before powering a header past Jordan Pickford.
After that Khazri produced sufficient pleasing cameos to beg the question as to why Moyes had left him in his deep freeze for so many months. The Scot keeps lamenting the lack of “quality” in his squad but the former Bordeaux winger is one Sunderland player not lacking in that commodity.
Billy Jones is consistently industry personified but the home right back received a nasty bang on the head for his efforts in chasing down the ball under pressure here and received several minutes of treatment on the pitch before being stretchered off in a neck brace with an oxygen mask clamped over his face.
His replacement, Fabio Borini, scored with his first touch, rifling in a shot after Randolph misjudged Darron Gibson’s cross. Suddenly, West Ham were in disarray and Byram was sent off for a second bookable offence, namely fouling Adnan Januzaj
Guardian