After 10 minutes at the London Stadium, West Ham were two goals behind and taking a battering. Playing possum for the next 20, it would turn out, was a shrewd move.
For having encountered so few signs of life in their feeble opponents, so little resistance to their easy dominance after taking what looked a match-winning lead, Arsenal grew complacent, toying too long with their prey, until the moment on the half-hour mark when Declan Rice robbed a dawdling Thomas Partey on the edge of the visiting box. From nowhere West Ham’s best, most tigerish qualities were reborn.
