West Ham 3-1 Fulham (Bowen 29’, Scamacca 62’, Antonio 90+1’ | Pereira 5’)
West Ham won a London derby on Sunday that was cloaked in more VAR controversy and ultimately decided by a moment of cool-headed precision by the Hammers’ increasingly impressive new striker Gianluca Scamacca.
The 23-year-old Italian had missed three first-half chances against Fulham, two with point-blank headers, the third an angled shot, when he drew a through-ball out of the air just past the hour.
Scamacca sensed he was offside. He was also aware that the ball had brushed his hand, yet ignoring the potential annulment of what he was about to do, he steadied himself to scoop a delicate shot over Fulham keeper Bernd Leno.
It was the moment which decided an open contest, yet it required fully three minutes of VAR replays before Scamacca’s sixth goal since his £30.5m move from Sassuolo was confirmed.
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West Ham United
Fabianski 6; Kehrer 5, Zouma 6, Dawson 8, Cresswell 7; Soucek 6, Rice 6; Bowen 7, Paqueta 9 (Emerson 84, 6), Fornals 6 (Downes 90+2, 6); Scamacca 8 (Antonio 80, 8)
Subs not used: Areola, Johnson, Coufal, Ogbonna, Lanzini, Benrahma
Fulham
Leno 7; De Cordova-Reid 5; Adarabioyo 6, Ream 5, Robinson 7; James 5 (Wilson 77, 6), Reed 8 (Cairney 71, 7), Palhinha 7, Kebano 6 (Duffy 89, 6); Pereira 6 (Onomah 77, 6); Vinicius 5
Subs not used: Rodak, Mbabu, Diop, Harris, Godo,
Referee: Chris Kavanagh
Having seen his squad worn down by cumulative fatigue as they competed on both domestic and European fronts last season, West Ham manager David Moyes knows he now has a forward who can share the goalscoring burden shouldered by Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio, who scored their side’s first and third goals, respectively.
Moyes said: “Scamacca is showing that he’s not a one-trick pony when it comes to goalscoring. He’s a young centre forward who’s got a lot of different elements to his game.
“I didn’t see a hand involved in his goal at all. But it took VAR such a long time to decide that I thought it was going to go against us.”
Instead, it was Fulham who were incensed, even more so when the replay of the goal was shown on the big screens at the London Stadium to add to the feeling of injustice that had already been roused by a first-half penalty decision.
That came when Andreas Pereira blocked Craig Dawson’s run at a corner in spite of being warned twice by referee Chris Kavanagh before Aaron Cresswell managed to send his cross in.
It looked an obvious penalty, allowing Bowen to send Leno the wrong way and cancel out a sumptuous rising shot on the run by Pereira which had given the visitors a deserved fifth-minute lead.
They might have made it 2-0 had a Dan James shot from outside the area not curled against the bar instead of dipping just under it.
Instead, Fulham manager Marco Silva was left apoplectic on the touchline by the perceived injustice of it all. Creditably, he chose his words cleverly afterwards.
“If I talk about the penalty, I have to talk about the second goal and the third goal as well and I want to be on the bench in the next game,” Silva said.
“The referee was embarrassed like myself when he saw the second goal on the screen, but he has to respect the decision of someone else.”
By the time Leno and Tim Ream fell over each other to gift Antonio a tap-in in injury-time, the game was up for Fulham, who will hope that the injured Aleksandar Mitrovic will soon recover from a foot injury.
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