Barclays U21 : West Hoof 1-1 Spurs

Venue : Academy of Hoof. KO : 7pm.

Match sponsor : the Romford Recorder (flyer delivery optional) .

The U21s go into this game knowing that a win will secure their place in the play-off stage of the season, with 3 games to spare.

West Ham :

Larkins, Spence, Shaw, Nasha, Potts, Ruddock, Paulista, Moncur, Maiga, Lletget, Turgott.

Driver, Baxter, Tombides, Maguire, Bywater.


Spurs :

Vigouroux; Fredericks, Hall, Kaboul, Fryers; Bentaleb, Carroll, Veljkovic; McEvoy, Coulthirst, Ceballos.

Munns, Priestley, Barthram, Gallifuoco, Dombaxe.


Goals :

West Ham : Paulista.
Spurs : McEvoy


The summary of the play : the hoof vs the silky smooth.

For the first 15 mins, West Ham could hardly keep the ball under control, and were hoofing it more or less all the time. Spurs were playing ok, but nothing special. Their first serious chance came from a cross from the left into the box, that Kaboul then headed across goal and out for a corner. From that corner they put in a good cross, and Paulista got in front of everyone at the near post to head in.

That woke Spurs up (Carroll in particular) , and we got the <standard> U21s.
West Ham from that moment on until FT effectively conceded CM to Spurs, who brought the ball forward at will via Bentaleb, or were being split open by Carrolls' passing.

The equaliser came from a beautiful 50 yd sweeping move from right to left. A pass found Carroll at half-way who immediately sent McEvoy free on the left. Baby left their defence for dead and slotted a nice shot into goal. A couple of mins later, Carroll released Courthirst who should have had a better shot on goal.

The back four were quite nervous though.
Whenever there were melees in the box, West Ham seemed to get the better of it. From one such event they had a shot that hit the post.

At HT, Carroll was subbed (either injured, or withdrawn to be part of the squad for the Basel game) . Kaboul came off 10 mins later. And the MF threat seemed to dampen a bit. Ceballos in particular was running riot in the 2nd half. However, the end product from the team was not good.

West Ham actually had very good hold-up play up front, and with their backs away and on the turn they did the Spurs back four quite often. They missed a sitter in the 2nd half, forced a good save from Vigouroux, and had two attempts where if they had shot straight off rather than trying to control it, might have got some reward.

Similarly, their GK made two very good saves. One from a Bentaleb header, and another from a Ceballos belter from the right.

Overall, a draw was a fair result.
Spurs did not deserve to win based on end product, but West Ham did not deserve to lose.