West Ham 3-2 Fulham: Graham Potter wins first Premier League game as Hammers boss in five-goal thriller | Football news

Graham Potter ignited his reign as West Ham manager after two first-half goals in the space of 131 seconds led him to his first win in a 3-2 win over Fulham at the London Stadium.

Adama Traore missed a brilliant chance to rescue a point for the visitors when he inexplicably skied over from close range after good work from teenage replacement 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 to Aston Villa in the third round on Friday, but his side were the happy recipients of two goals from Fulham errors.

The West Ham boss, who replaced Julen Lopetegui last week, brought them back to winning ways in his first home game when Carlos Soler pounced on an Andreas Pereira error to break the deadlock against the run of play (31).

By then, Fulham had already hit the crossbar through Harry Wilson, but they were soon two behind when Aaron Wan-Bissaka kept alive a cross from Guido Rodriguez to set up Tomas Soucek for a crucial 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).

That set up the second half for a sustained Fulham attack, but a mistake from Bernd Leno under pressure from Danny Ings allowed Lucas Paqueta to re-establish the home side’s lead (67).

In keeping with West Ham’s season, however, they were unable to rest comfortably for too long as another Iwobi cross eluded the touch of Harry Wilson to beat Fabianski in what was a carbon copy of his first (78).

The result means that Potter’s side move up to 12th place in the Premier League, while Fulham remain in ninth place.

How Potter’s first victory was gift wrapped

Fulham boss Marco Silva will bemoan his side’s sloppiest performance of the campaign. For large parts of this contest they were in control. West Ham scored their first two goals from their first two shots of the game. However, when Raul Jimenez hit the crossbar moments after Soucek’s strike, you sensed it wasn’t going to be their night.

Potter knows his side will have to be better than this in the coming weeks with more London derbies on the horizon, but he will be pleased with how his players showed determination in the face of the visitors’ persistence in pursuit of a point.

Iwobi breathed life into their hopes when his cross eluded Jimenez to outfox Fabianski just six minutes after the restart. But Silva could not hide his despair at Leno’s uncharacteristic error which ultimately allowed the hosts to pull away.

Ings, a substitute for Mohamed Kudus, chased a lost cause to pounce on the sleeping stopper and provide Paqueta with an unguarded net. Relief for West Ham who held on despite Iwobi’s repeated ploy to beat Fabianski from a cross.

Fulham were the architects of their own downfall, compounded by Traore’s gaping miss at the death, on a night when Potter’s first win was gift-wrapped.

Silva: Punished by our own mistakes

Fulham boss Marco Silva:

“We are being punished by our own mistakes and obviously it is our fault that we lost the game. We created enough chances to have been in front and West Ham did not go around our field at all.

“We made a mistake in our build-up and we felt that mistake led to the second. We lost the first duel and then the second. We lost our principle for a few minutes.

“They played almost the whole second half defensively, but then we gave away another goal. Raul and Adama had two great chances to equalize, so obviously the result didn’t reflect what happened on the pitch. But we can’t do that so easy for a team to punish us.”

The history of the match in statistics

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