West Ham 3-2 Fulham: Graham Potter wins first Premier League game
- sky sports 2025/01/15 02:24
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Graham Potter ignited his reign as West Ham manager after two first-half goals in the space of 131 seconds propelled him to his first victory in a helter-skelter 3-2 win over Fulham at the London Stadium.
Adama Traore missed a glorious chance to rescue a point for the visitors when he inexplicably skied from close range after good work from teenage substitute Josh King deep into stoppage time.
Potter's first game in charge did not go to plan as the Hammers exited the FA Cup with a 2-1 defeat by Aston Villa in the third round on Friday but his side were the gleeful recipients of two goals from Fulham errors.
The West Ham boss, who replaced Julen Lopetegui last week, returned them to winning ways in his first home game as Carlos Soler pounced on an Andreas Pereira mistake to break the deadlock against the run of play (31).
By that point, Fulham had already struck the crossbar through Harry Wilson but they were soon two behind as Aaron Wan-Bissaka kept alive a cross from Guido Rodriguez to set up Tomas Soucek for a quickfire second (33).
West Ham, who had lost three games in a row across all competitions - conceding a total of 11 goals - saw their lead halved when Alex Iwobi's cross beat Lukasz Fabianski after Raul Jimenez went to play the ball (51).
It set the second half up for a sustained Fulham assault but a mistake from Bernd Leno under pressure from Danny Ings allowed Lucas Paqueta to re-establish the home side's two-goal lead (67).
In keeping with West Ham's season, they were unable to rest comfortably for too long, however, as another Iwobi cross evaded the touch from Harry Wilson to beat Fabianski in what was a carbon copy of his first (78).
Jimenez and then Traore - glaringly - passed up chances to have the final word meaning Potter's side rise to 12th in the Premier League while Fulham stay in ninth place after their eight-game unbeaten run was ended.
Potter said: "We wanted to attack together, we wanted to defend together. It's no good speaking about individuals, it's about the team, it's about how we collectively, as a unit, work and that's been our focus.
"The way they've responded in terms of what they've been trying to do has been absolute top. I can't ask for any more. The players, the staff have been really, really supportive and the players have just tried to do their best and tried to take on board what we've asked them to do.
"They're not going to be perfect, I don't expect them to be, but I think the intention and the effort, that's the foundation, that's the minimum we require and I think because we had that, we were able to win tonight."
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