Duran secures most predictable goal of the season award on day one as Villa win at West Ham

Duran secures most predictable goal of the season award on day one as Villa win at West Ham

The earliest of days, but it did already feel a little bit like we needed a game where it wasn’t pretty obvious what might happen before it happened.

Manchester United scraping a wildly unconvincing home win against Fulham? Ipswich giving a fine account of themselves before being overwhelmed by Liverpool? Saka and Havertz setting each other up in a routine home win over Wolves for the pretenders to Man City’s crown? Tick, tick, tick.

Nottingham Forest against Bournemouth is a matchday one game that really could only ever end 1-1, and while Everton v Brighton might appear tricky to call you have to remember that August Everton and August Brighton are both quite specific things that mean a 3-0 away win was in fact very on brand.

Newcastle, to their credit, at least injected some jeopardy into their anticipated home win over the returning Southampton by playing an hour of it with only 10 men, but still. The expected result in the end.

West Ham v Aston Villa, though. This always seemed a trickier thing to forecast. The Hammers will inevitably take a while to achieve their final form under Julen Lopetegui, with a host of eye-catching new signings to bed in. A Villa side far further down their own road of reinvention were always going to be a tough opening test but for the first time this season here was a game that you really thought could go either way.

And then what happened happened and we realised that of course we should have seen this coming. From the moment Jhon Duran stepped off the substitutes’ bench for Aston Villa, there was only one possible outcome. Of course he was going to score the winner.

For the less terminally online among you, or those who for some reason don’t allow themselves to become entirely consumed by football flotsam and jetsam 365 days a year, let’s refresh your memories. Duran is the Villa striker who earlier this summer did a video performing the ‘Hammers cross’ as he sought a move to the club.

It never happened, and thus opened a banter window that left the universe with no option.

Our only criticism is the cowardice of not celebrating his late winner by repeating that celebration and making the heads of 50000 West Ham fans fall clean off.

It was a curious game in truth. West Ham spent much of the first half looking like a WIP that was never going to be remotely ready for Edinburgh, standing off Villa and allowing their visitors to dictate to an alarming degree. Allowing Amadou Onana a free header three yards out from a fourth-minute corner proved a significant error, and Villa could and should have extended that lead by at least a goal or two.

Then Matty Cash committed a penalty area clumsiness on Tomas Soucek and Lucas Paqueta drew West Ham level from the spot almost entirely against the run of play.

After half-time there was a lengthy spell when West Ham started to look like they might be getting the hang of it and appeared the likelier winners. Here we had it then: the first unpredictable game of the season, one which Villa looked set fair to win after half-an-hour but were now apparently struggling just to hold on to a point.

But then Duran was introduced by Unai Emery and those vast array of remaining possibilities were instantly reduced to one.

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