West Ham vs Norwich City: Jarrod Bowen scored a brace to bring West Ham to the top four

Match preview

At this moment, West Ham and Norwich City are having two completely opposite forms. The home team are enjoying their winning sequence with all wins since 2022. On the other hand, Dean Smith’s club have recently suffered five consecutive losses in the 2021-22 Premier League.

Under the leadership of the old-and-unsuccessful Aston Villa’s manager, Dean Smith, Norwich have only tasted winning once in the match against Southampton and had five losses without any goal.  

Their head-to-head record is no brighter than the current fact. Norwich didn’t defeat West Ham in the eight previous games as the visitors, and during the last 11 years, The Canaries have never won over one game in London. 

With this worst result, it is not surprising that Norwich City are sitting at the bottom of the Premier League table with only 10 points. But who knows? With the desire and a thirst for a win, Norwich City can turn the table and provide us with surprises?

Line-up

• West Ham: Fabianski, Cresswell, Dawson, Coufal, Diop, Antonio, Lanzini, Vlasic, Rice, Pablo Fornals, Bowen.
• Norwich: Krul, Hanley, Gibson, Aarons, Williams, McLean, Rashica, Lees Melou, Płacheta, Pukki, Idah.

Jarrod Bowen scored twice for West Ham

With home advantage and also being judged superior to the visitors, West Ham were obviously better in all criteria, like time of ball possession, shots on target, and corner kicks. David Moyes created an extremely dominant game to threaten the opponent. But it still needed to wait until the 36th minute for West Ham to shake the net of Norwich. Unfortunately, after the VAR review, Jarrod Bowen’s goal was denied due to the offside. 

Six minutes later, this 25-year-old forward officially scored the opening goal for the home club. It was an accurate header from Bowen, with the assist of Vladimír Coufal to put West Ham in front. 

The first half ended with the 1-0 temporary score for West Ham. The Hammers kept dominating the game in the second half, which made Norwich were forced to search for an equalizer. This created a great opportunity for West Ham to make quick and effective counter-attacks to take advantage of the space in the away team’s defense. 

In the 67th minute, Adam Idah had a really dangerous shot which was expected to equalize the score for Norwich, but the West Ham goalkeeper successfully stopped it.

Adam Idah almost scored the equalizer for Norwich

Bowen also had several chances to bring more goals for West Ham in the second half, but all were denied by the crossbar and the post. It was thought that the game would end with a 1-0 score, but until the 83rd minute, he completed his double with a close shot. 

It was the second time in this game that Bowen’s goal needed another look by VAR, but his second goal in the 83rd minute was eventually recognized. 

Jarrod Bowen shined on the pitch by scoring a brace for West Ham

The game ended up with a brace from Jarrod Bowen and a 2-0 win for West Ham to defeat Norwich.

Updated 2021-22 Premier League table  

With this result, Jarrod Bowen sent West Ham back to the top four of the competition. They are currently obtaining 27 points, two greater than fifth-placed Arsenal, and five fewer than Liverpool who are standing third. Both of these clubs haven’t played their 21st matches. 

Norwich, with only two wins since the beginning of the season and 14 losses, are still sitting at the bottom of the table with 10 points. It is almost certain to say that Dean Smith and his students will be relegated to the lower division next season. It seems that Dean Smith has brought the string of failures and bad luck from Aston Villa to soon send them back to the EFL Championship. 

2021-22 Premier League table

References

Wikipedia

Betimate.com

Vavel.com

bbc.com