Leicester 0-3 West Ham: Hammers easily defeat lacklustre Foxes

Leicester City’s unbeaten start to the season was completely whipped out by  West Ham United on Sunday as they were defeated 3-0.

First-half goals by Michail Antonio and Pablo Fornals versus Leicester City stormed West Ham United into a shock lead, before Jarrod Bowen’s third goal in two games sealed only David Moyes’ fifth away win as manager of the club.

The defeat is Leicester‘s first against a London side at home since Crystal Palace won 4-1 in Claude Puel’s last game in charge.

Compared to last week’s victory at Manchester City, the performance levels from every single player in blue was shocking for Leicester as they lose their first game of the season.

Leicester started the game strongly and looked set to continue where they left off at Etihad last Sunday. Jamie Vardy and Harvey Barnes were pestering West Ham’s back three early on and Ayoze Perez was finding himself in pockets between the midfield and defence.

However, Moyes’ side took the lead after 14 minutes when Antonio cushioned the ball past Kasper Schmeichel from Aaron Cresswell’s cross. The goal would of frustrated Brendan Rodgers, with both Caglar Soyuncu and James Justin at fault for ball-watching before the former-Nottingham Forest forward opened the scoring.

Antonio became the first Hammers player to score in five consecutive top-flight away matches since Mike Small in 1991.

As the first half continued, it was clear they were missing Dennis Praet‘s presence in midfield and Nempalys Mendy’s security in front of the back three. Rodgers’ choice to select Perez as a winger was denying any creativity from midfield that was so pivotal last week.

West Ham doubled their lead 10 minutes before half-time through Fornals in what was one of the worse 15 seconds of Premier League defending this season. A long-ball from Cresswell was ran-onto by Fornals before the Spaniard brought the ball down brilliantly before beating Schmeichel.

Despite it being clear that the Foxes needed to change something, there were no changes at the break and Leicester stuck to the back three.

However, it took Rodgers 10 second-half minutes to switch it up when he replaced Daniel Amartey for Cengiz Under to make his Foxes debut. It wasn’t long until Perez was dismissed, for Kelechi Iheanacho in another poor performance from the former-Newcastle man.

The second-half followed how everyone would have predicted, with Leicester throwing everything at West Ham’s 11 men behind the ball, but there remained no efforts on goal.

Leicester’s misery was completed when Bowen’s neat finish past Schmeichel made it 3-0 and ended the hope, if any, of a late comeback from the hosts.

In injury-time, Barnes had a goal ruled out for offside after some sensational one-passing football, but VAR identified Vardy as offside.

Next up for Leicester City, following the international break, is the visit of Aston Villa, a team they have not lost in a league game against since 2014.

For West Ham, the win means they have kept consecutive clean sheets in the league for the first time since August 2019 and hands them their first away victory since they dismantled Norwich City 4-0 in July.