View: Three things learnt in West Ham brilliant Europa League win v Lyon
West Ham made it through the Europa League semi-final last night [April 14] following their scintillating win at the Groupama Stadium against Lyon.
David Moyes’ side breezed past the Ligue 1 outfit 3-0 on the night [4-1 on aggregate] thanks to goals from Craig Dawson, Declan Rice and Jarrod Bowen.
The Irons can now look forward to facing Eintracht Frankfurt in the elusive next round as they look to book their place in the final.
Here are three things we at West Ham Zone learnt from the game…
West Ham can win the Europa League
The fans started to dream after the Sevilla game and those dreams gathered huge momentum last night as the Hammers made easy work of sweeping Lyon to one side. Make no mistake, the Bundesliga outfit will be a very tough test in the semi-final but the east Londoners have to be the favourites to win the competition now.
Only three games stand in the way of them and the trophy and in their current form, nobody looks capable of stopping them.
No Zouma, no problem
Kurt Zouma is undoubtedly West Ham’s best defender. When he has been absent this season, the team have massively struggled to hit the same heights.
It seemed typical of this season that they would not only be without the Frenchman but Aaron Cresswell as well as they prepared for an extremely tough battle in Lyon but they handled it amazingly.
Issa Diop and Ben Johnson did superbly in place of the duo who weren’t even missed and Diop will have a very important role to play with the former Chelsea man out for the rest of the season.
Grudge match awaits
Both sets of fans clashed as they shared the city for their respective round of 16 ties in Seville. The Germans were said to be the antagonists as the Irons fans defended themselves over in Spain.
Hopefully, the fans don’t clash again with there now being two opportunities for misbehaviour across both legs. There will be more than enough fireworks on the pitch as two great sides come together and the Hammers could do without any trouble potentially overshadowing what will be a historic tie.
In other West Ham news, BT Sport pundit has taken aim at “rash” Diop
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