Late goals from Jarrod Bowen and Mohammed Kudus were enough to see off struggling Manchester United as West Ham grabbed a 2-0 victory at the London Stadium.
Striker Bowen notched his 12th goal of the campaign and Ghanaian winger Kudus got his seventh in 12 games as United were condemned to a 20th defeat of 2023, their worst tally in 34 years.
Erik ten Hag's team haven't scored a goal in six hours and 46 minutes of action. That's worse than any other Premier League side and it was their 13th defeat in their last 26 matches.
The makeshift visitors' line-up again included youngster Kobbie Mainoo and 19-year-old Congolese centre-back Willy Kambwala made his first appearance for the club as Victor Lindelof, Harry Maguire, Lisandro Martinez and Raphael Varane are all on the Old Trafford casualty list.
After a lifeless first 72 minutes Bowen finally broke the deadlock and six minutes later Kudus added a second.
Ten Hag brought on Marcus Rashford for the ineffective Rasmus Hojlund just before the hour.
But it was Bowen who made the breakthrough when he played the ball to Lucas Paqueta, collected the return pass and bundled the ball in off keeper Andre Onana.
And Brazil star Paqueta was the creator once more with his fifth assist in a row in the Premier League.
He slipped in Kudus to kill off United with a fine low finish to deepen the gloom surrounding Ten Hag’s sorry side.
West Ham's Bowen said after the game: "We had our chances and one thing about us is that we keep chipping and plugging away to get the goal and we got the first goal and then did really well to get the second one.
"Last few weeks Lucas [Paqueta] had five assists. All of us want to score goals and be the creative spark. We're enjoying our football and one we knew how important today was to go into Christmas in the top six-seven and all we can do is keep winning games."
Manchester United manager Ten Hag told BBC Match of the Day: "I think it was a decent 72 minutes where we didn't take our chances. We should've gone in the lead but we didn't and then it was one moment of switching off."
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