Hammers smash six to wreck rotten Wrexham's night
West Ham United was too hot to handle for Wrexham, claiming a resounding 6-0 win at London Stadium to move to the top of the EFL Championship.
It was a miserable night for the Welsh side, which has just one win from its seven games so far this season and it didn't put a shot on target from five attempts here.
The Hammers, meanwhile, were creating scoring opportunities for fun, and after Jarrod Bowen was denied early by a sensational save from Anthony Patterson, who pushed the ball on to the crossbar in the 12th minute, the West Ham captain opened the scoring just before the half-hour mark with a simple tap-in.
Joel Piroe, who was also guilty of missing an earlier sitter, made amends himself with a sound strike on 37 minutes and half-time couldn't come quick enough for Wrexham, which was struggling to keep pace with the red hot hosts.
The start of the second half couldn't have been worse for Phil Parkinson's visitors, Konstantinos Mavropanos nodding Jarrod Bowen's corner delivery under the legs of Patterson to make it 3-0 only three minutes after the restart.
Valentin Castellanos put home arguably the pick of the bunch to make it four without reply, firing home a pinpoint strike from the edge of the box to finish a move that swept from one end of the pitch to the other, before Mohamadou Kante snuck in behind the Wrexham defence to collect a ball over the top and blast home the fifth goal.
Manor Solomon became the sixth different scorer for the Hammers on 82 minutes, Patterson managing to get his fingertips to the ball but succeeding only in pushing it on to the post, from which it rebounded into the back of his net once again.
West Ham boss Nuno Espirito Santo was not surprisingly delighted with what he saw from his side.
"All of us really enjoyed how the boys played – the combinations that they had," he said. "I think we're starting to see signs of what we do at Rush Green [West Ham's training ground], the way we keep insisting on those combinations.
"It was really positive with all the players in the front line scoring. So it was a big boost of confidence for us."
Parkinson, meanwhile, reflected on what he called a very tough night.
"As a manager you always look at yourself and we'll do that," he said.
"First 25 minutes, I thought we were OK. The first two goals were really soft from our point of view, I felt we could've prevented them with better defending.
"They've got very good players and if you don't defend properly they're a team who will punish. They were absolutely clinical but we could've done better.
"We didn't cope anywhere near as well as we should've tonight. A part of me is saying they're a good side but also we can do a lot better.
"I need to think long and hard because we've played Championship teams when we were in the National League in cup games and we've played a lot better, and we didn't do that tonight."
West Ham will host near neighbour Fulham in the Carabao Cup next week, high on confidence against a Premier League side will very little after a poor start to its season under new boss Alvaro Arbeloa.
Wrexham, bundled out of that competition in the first round by Middlesbrough, will have time to reflect on a disastrous outing here as Parkinson looks for answers to get his side back in a positive mindset before it hosts Southampton in the Championship next weekend.
