West Ham return to the London Stadium on Saturday looking to get back on track after last weekend’s hugely frustrating 3-2 home defeat by Southampton brought our nine-match unbeaten Championship run to an abrupt end. The visit of West Bromwich Albion gives us the opportunity to respond immediately, but this is certainly no routine home fixture. West Ham go into the weekend third in the Championship with 22 points from 12 matches, while West Brom are fifth with 21, so a single point separates the sides.
In fact, that makes Saturday one of those early-season games which may eventually prove rather more significant than it appears at the time. Win it and we put the Southampton disappointment behind us, maintain our position amongst the promotion challengers and create a little breathing space between ourselves and West Brom. Lose, and the Baggies go above us. Breathing space! See what I did there? Yes, I’ve taken note of the big phrase in this week’s budget speech.
First, though, it’s difficult to look ahead without looking back at what was an extraordinary afternoon at the London Stadium last Saturday. Let’s get one thing straight before we start looking for scapegoats. West Ham didn’t lose to Southampton because of the referee. We lost because our opening to the game was dreadful.
Southampton were ahead after only two minutes through Kuryu Matsuki and doubled their advantage through James Bree in the 11th minute. West Ham were shell-shocked, but to our credit we responded strongly and Kyle Walker-Peters, playing against his former club, produced an excellent finish to make it 2-1 after 24 minutes. At that point, we really were back in the game. West Ham were firmly on the front foot and an equaliser seemed distinctly possible, in fact I thought it was inevitable. But instead Southampton struck again.
Lewis Dobbin restored their two-goal advantage on 34 minutes after a succession of blocked efforts, leaving us 3-1 down and wondering how, having played some decent attacking football, we’d conceded three goals in little more than half an hour. It was sloppy defending and Southampton punished it ruthlessly. Sky Sports described our defending for the third goal as “lacklustre” and reasonably called the result a wake-up call for anyone who thought West Ham were going to stroll to promotion. I can’t really argue with that.
Yet the afternoon also left me increasingly irritated by something else. The referee was Michael Salisbury, an official with plenty of Premier League experience. Frankly, at times his performance was baffling. Southampton were winning and naturally wanted to slow the game down. I don’t particularly blame them for that. Most teams would do exactly the same thing in their position. What was infuriating from a West Ham perspective was how little appeared to be done about it.
Restarts seemed to take an eternity. Goal kicks, throw-ins and free-kicks became exercises in running down the clock. Players went down, the rhythm of the game disappeared and Southampton were able to take the sting out of West Ham’s attempts to build momentum. But anyone watching from a West Ham perspective could be forgiven for wondering exactly when Michael Salisbury was going to take control. And then came the first-half stoppage time. Two minutes. Seriously? The first half had contained four goals, scored in the second, 11th, 24th and 34th minutes. Four separate goals. Four celebrations. Four restarts. Add the usual stoppages and Southampton’s determination to take as much heat out of proceedings as possible, and somehow the conclusion was that only two additional minutes were required. It was astonishing.
There isn’t a rule which says a particular number of seconds must automatically be added every time a goal is scored, so we can’t simply multiply four goals by a fixed figure. But equally, you don’t need a stopwatch and a degree in mathematics to wonder how a half containing four goals and all the other interruptions that go with 45 minutes of Championship football could possibly result in just two minutes being added. It looked completely inadequate.
And that is where I think referees have to accept responsibility. If a team believes it can waste time without consequence, it will. Why wouldn’t it? It isn’t Southampton’s responsibility to make sure West Ham have enough time to score. It is the referee’s responsibility to manage the game and ensure that deliberate delays don’t simply reduce the amount of football being played. What made it particularly exasperating was that West Ham were chasing the game and beginning to apply pressure. Every little delay suited Southampton perfectly.
The frustration continued into the second half as West Ham tried to find a way back. Eventually Tomáš Souček scored his 50th goal for the club in stoppage time to give us the faintest hope, but it was too late and Southampton held on for a 3-2 win.
So let’s be absolutely clear. The referee didn’t cost us the match. We did a pretty good job of that ourselves in the opening 34 minutes. But that shouldn’t become a convenient reason for absolving Michael Salisbury of criticism either. From a West Ham supporter’s perspective, his failure to get to grips with Southampton’s game management, allied to the frankly ridiculous two minutes added at the end of a four-goal first half, made an already irritating afternoon considerably worse.
I’ll refrain from mentioning Nuno. Geoff did an excellent job with his views on our manager in his review of the Southampton game this week. I agree with most of what Geoff wrote. I found some of his substitution decisions baffling I’m afraid. Kante and Walker-Peters were two of our most impressive players in an attacking sense and both were withdrawn as we were chasing the game. I love Tomas Soucek in so many ways but his lack of pace and graduation from the Carlton Cole school of ball control are not positive attributes. But just as I was thinking that he did score a splendid goal!
In some ways, Southampton might prove to be a useful reality check. There had been plenty to be encouraged about during our nine-match unbeaten league run, but Saturday demonstrated that nothing in the Championship can be taken for granted. Southampton arrived at the London Stadium, attacked us from the start and made us pay heavily for our mistakes. Now we shall discover something else about this West Ham side: how will we react to a setback?
Our recent form remains pretty impressive. Before Southampton, we’d won 1-0 at Swansea and 6-0 at Lincoln, while previous league games against QPR and Millwall had finished level. West Ham’s overall record after 12 Championship matches is six wins, four draws and two defeats, with 32 goals scored and 15 conceded. Thirty-two goals in 12 games confirms that scoring isn’t exactly our biggest problem.
Keeping them out at the other end occasionally is. And after conceding three against Southampton, another lapse-filled start against West Brom would be asking for trouble. The Baggies arrive in decent form themselves. Their most recent match was a 1-1 draw at Preston, which followed victories over Blackburn and Wrexham. They have six wins, three draws and three defeats from 12 Championship matches and have conceded only 13 goals. That last figure catches my attention. West Ham have scored twice as many league goals as West Brom, 32 compared with 16, but the Baggies’ defensive record suggests we shouldn’t expect them to be obliging visitors. There’s an interesting contrast there.
West Ham matches have often provided goals. Eight of our last ten have contained three or more goals, whereas only three of West Brom’s last ten have done so. That suggests Saturday should become something of a battle of styles, with West Ham wanting to get on the front foot and impose our attacking game while West Brom may be perfectly content if things remain tight and uncomfortable. If so, patience will be important, but hopefully please, not too much patience. After what happened last Saturday, I’d rather we didn’t wait until we’re 2-0 down before we decide to start playing.
Remarkably, this will be the first league meeting between the clubs since May 2021. We won both Premier League encounters that season, beating West Brom 2-1 at the London Stadium in January before winning 3-1 at The Hawthorns in May. Our previous meeting, however, wasn’t quite so enjoyable: West Brom came to the London Stadium in January 2020 and knocked us out of the FA Cup with a 1-0 victory. Those meetings belong to a different era, of course. The rather uncomfortable reality in 2026 is that we’re renewing acquaintances not in the Premier League but in the Championship. Hopefully that’s only a temporary arrangement.
One defeat doesn’t suddenly turn a good start into a bad one. We’re third. We’ve lost only twice in 12 league matches. We’ve scored 32 goals. Before last weekend we’d gone nine league games without defeat. There is still a great deal to be positive about. What this Saturday should tell us, however, is whether we’ve learned anything from Southampton.
We cannot spend the first ten minutes defending as though the match doesn’t start until quarter past three. We can’t give decent Championship sides two-goal leads and expect to keep getting away with it. And we need to rediscover the defensive concentration that had brought consecutive clean sheets before Southampton arrived.
I’d like us to start aggressively against West Brom, but intelligently. Get Jarrod Bowen involved early. Encourage Kyle Walker-Peters to get forward again. Let the crowd sense from the opening few minutes that last weekend hurt and that there is a determination to put it right. Above all, let’s score the first goal. After last weekend, I’m not sure my nerves fancy another afternoon spent chasing the game.
Saturday isn’t quite a must-win match. Not in October. But it is the sort of home game a side with serious automatic promotion aspirations needs to win. Southampton gave us a bloody nose and provided a timely reminder that getting back to the Premier League isn’t going to be the formality some people thought it might be. Now it’s our turn to respond.
My ratings from the Southampton game: Hermansen 5, Walker-Peters 7.5, Kilman 5, Mavropanos 5, Morato 5, Engels 7, Mukasa 7, Kante 8, Solomon 5, Taty 5, Bowen 7. Pablo the best of the substitutes.
