Robert Snodgrass was praised by West Ham boss Manuel Pellegrini after the midfielder scored his first goal of the season in the 1-1 draw with Sheffield United.
Snodgrass, 32, was the Hammers’ best player on the pitch and rewarded the faith his manager had put in him with a fine left footed strike just before half-time.
With Declan Rice and Mark Noble playing behind him, Snodgrass was given the licence to roam and he caused Sheffield’s defence constant problems with his forward runs off the ball and tireless work rate throughout the match.
He got his reward in the 44th minute after he found himself through on goal following a delightful through ball by Andriy Yarmolenko. With the goal at his mercy Snodgrass didn’t panic, took one touch and calmly slotted the ball past the outrushing Dean Henderson.
Snodgrass continued to impress in the second half and was perhaps unlucky not to score a second.
With the score at 1-1 after Lys Mousset had equalised for the visitors, substitute Pablo Fornals found himself in space on the right hand side and his cross across the six yard box was met by a sliding Snodgrass at the back post, whose effort hit the post.
Snodgrass gave his all and the fact Hammers fans booed Pellegrini’s decision to take the midfielder off with seven minutes to go shows how good a performance he put in.
After the game, Pellegrini said the decision to bring striker Albian Ajeti on was a tactical one.
“Because we are in the last three or four minutes of the game, we wanted to be with two players inside the box so we can score that goal to decide the game.
“Robert worked a lot during the whole game. He did very good game [but] we needed fresh legs inside the box to try to score the second goal.”
In theory Pellegrini may be right, but the fact is West Ham looked less threatening when Snodgrass left the field.
“Robert scored the goal and he is a player who gives a bit of bite to our team,” the West Ham manager added.
“We need to be more clinical to decide the game, though, so we lost two more important points at home.”
