West Ham United beats Newcastle 2-0

The whole event started off on a bad note for manager Steve McClaren’s Newcastle team, forced to walk a good distance to Upton Park owing to heavy traffic. Maybe that was a hint of things to come, as West Ham United blazed through the game without sparing a single goal to Newcastle.

Attacking midfielder Dimitri Payet struck gold in the ninth minute with a stroke from captain Mark Noble’s pass, putting the Hammers in the driver’s seat. Newcastle goalie Tim Krule posed no challenge to the Frenchman’s finesse.

Slaven Bilic, manager of West Ham, had a blast in Monday’s clash, as McClaren’s boys failed to keep up with the Hammers and slinked down to the bottom of the league table.

The history between the managers repeated itself, as McClaren had been removed from the English side following a humiliating defeat by Slaven’s Croatian side eight years ago at Wembley.

Bilic’s boys had another reason to rejoice at Upton Park when Payet struck again in the second half. A spectacular counter in the 48th minute proved why Payet has been making rounds in the football fandom as the probable Player of the Year. The win put the Hammers on the fifth spot in the league table with a total of 9 points in their hands.

The Newcastle side had brief moments of hope when Georginio Wijnaldum got past a pair of defenders and passed to Daryl Janmaat. But the latter in the penalty area could not get the ball through, trying to tackle Darren Randolph and losing the chance.

McClaren may not face a sacking like his last encounter with Slaven resulted in, but the newly joined manager of Newcastle will have a major rebuilding process to go through to compensate for the dismal loss.

“I don’t want to make excuses,” McClaren admitted “but it’s not the best preparations. This was a big wake up call for us.”