Staff Reporter.
West Ham United edged to a narrow Premier League 2-1 victory over struggling Wolves to ease the pressure on under-fire head coach Julen Lopetegui.
However, the result is only likely to increase the scrutiny over Gary O’Neil’s position as Wolves manager, with his side remaining 19th in the table after three consecutive defeats.
Tomas Soucek’s second-half header from Jarrod Bowen’s corner had set the hosts on their way.
Matt Doherty had superbly levelled from Rayan Ait-Nouri’s cross for the visitors, before Bowen scored West Ham’s decisive second goal with a placed effort during a frenetic spell in the second-half.
In between, Hammers winger Mohammed Kudus correctly had a goal ruled out for offside following a video assistant referee (VAR) review, while Wolves appeared to have genuine complaints when Emerson’s shove on Goncalo Guedes did not result in a penalty in their favour after a similar review.
O’Neil’s side were further enraged by the manner of Bowen’s winning goal with home defender Konstantinos Mavropanos seemingly fouling Wolves’ Uruguayan centre-back Santiago Bueno in the build-up.
The result leaves West Ham 14th in the table, nine points clear of the bottom three.
West Ham boss Julen Lopetegui:
“We are happy, we dedicate the victory to Michail and his family. It has been tough the last days – the last week – the last days especially. He deserves this. We love a lot Michail, he’s a special person for us. I’m sure he’ll overcome this bad moment and come back. Today the best thing we can do is get the victory for him.
“The first half we don’t start well. We score a set-piece goal, always important. The team showed character and good mentality [after the equaliser]. To have this kind of mentality is going to help us achieve more points.
“We deserved to win, we had a lot of chances, a lot of corners. We overcame one bad moment.”
Wolves boss Gary O’Neil:
“We gave ourselves a chance to get something from the game. You can see the lads are still 100 per cent committed and are willing to fight and give everything. We probably edged the game with good chances and good moments. And then we let ourselves down losing our marking at a corner, which apparently wasn’t a corner. I hear it came off Wan-Bissaka last.
“We didn’t find a way to turn it in our favour today. But some of the decisions went against us as well in a big game. Big moments. Some decisions that looked fairly straight forward went against us.”