Micah Richards gushes over West Ham defender Craig Dawson v Chelsea
Micah Richards has gushed over West Ham defender Craig Dawson’s performance in the Hammers’ 1-0 defeat to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
David Moyes decided to rest many of his key players against the Blues with their Europa League semi-final on the horizon but being the only fit senior centre-back in the squad saw the 31-year-old start.
Despite being sent off for denying Romelu Lukaku a clear goal-scoring opportunity, the BBC pundit waxed lyrical over the defender.
He said on Match of the Day 2: “Dawson was excellent and he has been awesome all season.
“He is a dependable player. Look at that for a block – Excellent. He marshalled the backline very well.
“Very good positioning, leadership. Just his all-around game leading the backline.”
Unfortunate.
Dawson did have a very good game it was just a massive shame that the one mistake he did make was enough to see him red-carded at the Bridge.
The former Watford defender got the better of Lukaku on several occasions whilst leading the much-changed Irons defence brilliantly.
Considering the state of that defence with Angelo Ogbonna, Kurt Zouma, and Issa Diop out injured it was a brilliant defensive display orchestrated by Dawson.
Not only that, the Hammers were without Jarrod Bowen and Declan Rice for the majority of the game with Michail Antonio also being handed a much-needed rest.
If you take all of that into account and the fact that the Blues only just scraped past Moyes’ side late on, it was a very good display from the east Londoners but they will still be disappointed not to have picked up a point.
West Ham clearly have bigger fish to fry in the shape of Eintracht Frankfurt at the London Stadium on Thursday [April 28]. That is the all-important game which could see yesterday’s unfortunate result completely forgotten about.
In other West Ham news, Declan Rice has turned down his third new contract at club and Manchester United respond.
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