WEST HAM UNITED 1 MANCHESTER UNITED 1
West Ham United midfielder Mark Noble acknowledged that his team’s 1-1 Premier League draw with Manchester United “feels like a loss” after Daley Blind’s last-gasp equaliser earned the visitors a point at Upton Park last night.
West Ham took the lead four minutes into the second half when makeshift defender Cheikhou Kouyate unleashed a superb on-the-turn volley past David de Gea.
The London club were on the brink of their first Premier League win over Manchester United in seven years and 13 attempts but Blind rescued a point for the visitors with a stoppage-time equaliser.
Radamel Falcao missed a glorious opportunity to equalise 14 minutes from time, but Blind popped up to score late on and earn a 1-1 draw for the visitors, who finished the game with 10 men as Luke Shaw was sent off for two bookable offences.
United avoided following Liverpool and Manchester City in leaving Upton Park defeated this term as Blind swept the ball into the net when Carl Jenkinson, on his 23rd birthday, failed to clear Marcos Rojo’s lofted ball into the box.
“It feels like a loss, to be honest,” Noble said. “It just shows how far we have come that we’re gutted we drew with Man United at home, with some world-class players out there today.
“I thought in many ways we were the better team and we just couldn’t hold out until then end.”
West Ham manager Sam Allardyce echoed Noble’s view that the east Londoners were unfortunate not to win the game and appeared to take a slight dig at United’s style of play.
“The lads are absolutely gutted in there and so they should be,” he said. “I think it was an absolutely fantastic performance and from the point of view of where we were just towards the end. I thought we were going to make sure we saw it through and unfortunately for us it was not to be. “I suppose, we couldn’t cope with long-ball United. It was just, ‘thump it forward and see what they could get’, and in the end it paid off for them.”
Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal criticised his side’s first-half display, but praised his players’ determination to salvage something from the match.
“We played very badly in the first half and we showed a lot of spirit in the second half, especially after the (West Ham) goal in the beginning - we gave that goal away I think,” he said, “and then we played football after the goal, but you have to do it from the first minute. But I have to say what a spirit my team showed after going 1-0 behind.”
