Evan Ferguson makes debut impact but Bees beat West Ham

Kevin Schade's early goal gave Brentford a 1-0 win at West Ham, with Graham Potter’s spell in charge yet to work its magic.

The Hammers have had 12 days of fine-tuning under new boss Potter since their last match, a 2-1 defeat at Chelsea, and somehow they have got worse.

In a one-sided first half, Brentford scored after four minutes, had two goals disallowed and hit a post, with West Ham looking utterly powerless to stop them.

A triple substitution, and an encouraging debut from Republic of Ireland striker Evan Ferguson, saw an improvement after the break, but not enough to snatch a point as Brentford sat on what they had.

West Ham were caught out on the counter-attack after just four minutes, with Bryan Mbeumo chasing Yoane Wissa’s ball over the top and getting in between centre-backs Maximilian Kilman and Konstantinos Mavropanos.

Mbeumo’s header played in Schade, whose low shot clipped the foot of goalkeeper Alphonse Areola and looped towards goal.

Mavropanos got back to hook the ball off the line, but Schade reacted quickest to stab the follow-up across the line before Areola could claw it out.

It was Schade’s 10th goal of the season, and the 10th time West Ham have conceded in the opening 10 minutes of a match.

Brentford were attacking at will and had the ball in the net again when Lucas Paqueta played a brainless pass across the pitch, deep inside his own half, straight to Mbeumo.

The Cameroon forward slipped in Wissa, who rolled the ball into an empty net only to be flagged for offside.

Wissa had a header saved by Areola and Schade crashed a shot against the outside of a post.

West Ham had an enormous let-off five minutes before half-time after Brentford strolled unchallenged straight through their entire defence.

Vitaly