Southampton 3-2 West HamHome team scorersManolo Gabbiadini 11
Dusan Tadic 38 Pen
Charlie Austin 90 +2:19 Pen
Away team scorersJavier Hernandez 45
Javier Hernandez 74
Charlie Austin snatched a stoppage-time winner from the penalty spot as Southampton beat 10-man West Ham United. Austin sent Joe Hart the wrong way as Mauricio Pellegrino clinched his first win as Southampton manager in dramatic crescendo. After going two goals behind, Javier Hernández had rolled back the years with two poachers finishes to very nearly get the Hammers off the hook.
Southampton had sailed into a two-goal lead, thanks to Manolo Gabbiadini and a Dusan Tadic penalty, before West Ham rallied. Slaven Bilic’s side played more than hour without Marko Arnautovic, given a straight red card for an elbow on Jack Stephens.
Gabbiadini had ended Southampton supporters’ mammoth 587-minute wait for a home goal although it looked as though they were heading for seven league games without a win, before Austin’s winner. Pablo Zabaleta was the guilty party, adjudged to have fouled Maya Yoshida in the box in injury-time.
Pellegrino handed his major summer signing, Mario Lemina, the Gabon midfielder signed for £18m from Juventus, his debut in Southampton’s only change from last weekend’s stalemate with Swansea City. Bilic, meanwhile, had made four changes although he restored Angelo Ogbonna to the starting lineup after Winston Reid was carried off a stretcher during the warm-up with a calf injury, a day after signing a new six-year contract with the club.
Bilic was cautious of being overzealous of Declan Rice pre-match but placed his confidence in him here, handing the 18-year-old his first West Ham start, alongside captain Mark Noble in midfield. Aaron Cresswell and José Fonte, meanwhile, both returned to the defence. Rice, who joined West Ham’s academy from Chelsea at the age of 14, was born in London but is eligible to play for the Republic of Ireland through his grandparents.
It was West Ham who actually settled quicker, with Arnautovic drilling low and wide after a being slid through by Michail Antonio. Southampton struggled to get a grip on the game, forcing Gabbiadini to come deep in search of the ball. When he did, he started and finished a slick move that ended with the Italy striker scoring his first Saints goal since March. After a neat give and go with Nathan Redmond, Gabbiadini burst in to a gaping hole between Ogbonna and Fonte and scuffed his effort low beyond Joe Hart. It was a goal that punctured West Ham’s promising start, before Arnautovic totally deflated them.
After Stephens had played the ball, Arnautovic played anything but, leading with his elbow on the Southampton defender, who fell to ground. The referee, Lee Mason, had little choice but to give Arnautovic, a straight red card. It was not the kind of impact West Ham’s watching owners, David Sullivan and David Gold, had hoped from their £20m club-record signing, who strutted down the tunnel, kicking the floor in anger as he went. Moments before his sending-off, he had gone close, stooping to head Hernández’s low cross from the right.
Then things got worse for Bilic, with Southampton awarded a penalty after 37 minutes. Fonte tugged on Steven Davis’s shirt inside the box and up stepped Tadic to convert from 12 yards, via Hart’s legs. It summed up a difficult afternoon for the former Southampton captain. With Saints cruising towards half-time, Hernández gave West Ham a lifeline, poking home after Fraser Forster parried Antonio’s hopeful effort from distance.
After the interval, Gabbiadini rattled the crossbar from 25 yards in an otherwise stale start to the second half. Bilic made a couple of personnel changes, introducing Diafra Sakho in place of Antonio, who was making his first appearance since picking up a hamstring injury in April.
Sakho made a fairly immediate impact, too. His powerful header from Cresswell’s whipped cross was pushed on to the bar by Forster but again lurking to tap home was Hernández after 74 minutes. West Ham’s tails were up once more, while Southampton threw on Charlie Austin and Shane Long in search of a winner themselves.
Long, correctly, had a goal disallowed after Ryan Bertrand fouled Hart before Redmond crashed an effort on to the crossbar. Eventually, though, Saints got their reward.
Guardian
