It may have been a bad day at the office for Arsenal but it proved to be a wonderful afternoon’s work for West Ham United at Emirates Stadium on Saturday.
While the misfiring Gunners left their shooting boots in the dressing room, Jarrod Bowen produced a deadly diving header on the stroke of half-time, to secure a valiant 1-0 victory for the Hammers.
Taking his tally for the season to eight, the West Ham skipper also made it a half-century of Premier League goals in claret and blue as the visitors put a huge dent in Mikel Arteta’s ever-diminishing title dream as Liverpool extended their lead to 11 points.
Kicking off without any recognised strikers, the injury-hit Spaniard endured a nightmare 90 minutes during which time his second-placed side managed just two shots on target, while substitute Myles Lewis-Skelly was also sent off on 73 minutes.
West Ham boss Graham Potter had been hampered by an ever-growing casualty list – Lucas Paquetá (ankle) being the latest patient to be wheeled into the treatment room – but a cocktail of dogged defending and clever counter-attacking saw his game-plan executed to perfection.
“I’m delighted with a disciplined, committed performance that was full of intelligence,” enthused the Hammers head coach after recording his first away-day win since taking over at London Stadium in early January.
“I had a feeling we could be the best version of ourselves today - dynamic, we showed togetherness and were full of team spirit.
“I was very impressed with our response to last Saturday’s home defeat against Brentford and this was a big result. I’m delighted for our supporters, too.
"We were playing a fantastic team, who will attack from all angles so we had to defend against that but we also carried a threat of our own, too.”
Having scuffed an earlier ngled shot disappointingly wide, Bowen sent Aaron Wan-Bissaka racing down the right wing on 44 minutes, before ghosting behind former Hammer Declan Rice and meeting the subsequent cross with that match-winning header.
To the delight of the travelling fans, Rice was withdrawn early in the second half and could only look on from the bench as referee Craig Pawson visited his pitchside monitor before giving recently-arrived Lewis-Skelly a red card for a professional foul on an escaping Mohammed Kudus.
“The sending-off seemed obvious to me and, when they were a goal behind and down to 10 men, Arsenal were playing with no risk so all credit to my players,” added Potter whose side now face lowly Leicester City at London Stadium on Thursday (8pm).
“You always need a bit of luck but we’ve earned that today. We did a lot of things well in my opening six games but that didn’t manifest itself in every result.
“Building confidence and belief is the only way to win matches and we now need to focus on our next game because we want to accumulate as many points as we can until the end of the season.”
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