Anybody who feared there would be crowd trouble here on Saturday need not have worried. Everybody inside the London Stadium was too spellbound by Marko Arnautovic’s swashbuckling performance to think of anything else.
As a result the atmosphere was unrecognisable from the defeat by Burnley three weeks ago. Gone was the discontent for the directors, replaced by a unified crowd simply desperate for their team to perform and get a result — and boy, did West Ham, and one player in particular, deliver.
Arnautovic bullied the away side from the off. His two first-half goals were brilliantly taken and justified the swaggering arrogance he exuded throughout the game.