West Ham rip Wolves to shreds on counter-attack with David Moyes putting plans in motion from his sofa

Sunday night television has never looked so good for David Moyes, who might even have allowed ­himself to enjoy a home brew or two before the end of this remarkably emphatic victory for his West Ham United side.

Watching from home as he continues his coronavirus isolation, Moyes can hardly have hoped for a more relaxing evening. After this performance, who is to say that management by phone will not be football’s next great technological advancement? Moyes dialled in the live instructions, and his players duly ripped Wolves to shreds on the counter-attack.

The suggestion in this part of the capital was that West Ham were heading towards an early-season crisis. It certainly did not feel that way at the London Stadium, where Moyes’ coaching staff, led by assistant Alan Irvine, jumped and hugged in celebration on the touchline. Their first points of the Premier League campaign were fully deserved, with Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio leading the destruction of a Wolves defence that was surprisingly easy to crack open.

With five minutes remaining, and the home side three goals to the good, the cameras cut to Stuart Pearce, the West Ham coach charged with taking Moyes’ calls. “Stuart was inundated,” said Irvine. We can only guess what Moyes might have been saying in these final few moments, but no one would have blamed the West Ham manager for telling his staff that they could take it from here.

“There were a lot of phone calls and all the messages that were passed down were very clear,” said Irvine, who added that Moyes was feeling fit and healthy at home. “The communication was all the way through the game, and the substitutions at the end were David’s ­substitutions.”

By contrast, Wolves manager Nuno Espirito Santo had a close-up view of an uncharacteristically flat performance from his players. They were stung by the pace of Bowen, who scored twice, and the powerful running of Antonio alongside him. Tomas Souceck headed in the third, via a deflection off Wolves striker Raul Jimenez, before substitute Sebastien Haller struck a late fourth.

“We played very, very badly,” said Nuno, as blunt as his team’s attacking. “We made many mistakes. Every counter-attack was a situation for a goal.”

It all made for a wonderfully encouraging night for West Ham, a team clearly in need of a lift. The home side’s record of having more Covid-19 positive cases than Premier League goals this season had hardly been a source of pre-match enthusiasm against opponents like Wolves, who had won each of their past four meetings with West Ham without conceding once.

Those coronavirus cases had provided the latest drama in West Ham’s turbulent start to the campaign. The captain criticising the board for selling an academy graduate, an absence of new signings, two consecutive league defeats and three coronavirus cases: none of these would have been on the to-do list.

Look a little deeper, though, and there had been small signs of promise. Against Arsenal last week, West Ham were the better side. Their system worked at the Emirates, with five at the back allowing Antonio to lead the counter-attack, and they deployed it again here.

Bowen promptly gave them the lead after charging straight at goal on the break. Running into space, he shifted the ball on to his left foot and ripped a low finish into the far corner. Antonio then went close twice, before Pablo Fornals fired over when it was easier to score.

Wolves tried to respond, but the higher they pushed, the more space they left in behind. Antonio was practically salivating over the prospect of running into the open turf and soon he was in again. He picked out Fornals, whose shot struck the foot of a post and was then turned in by Bowen.

On the touchline West Ham’s coaching staff leapt into each other’s arms, social-distancing guidelines forgotten amid all the excitement. There was more to come, too, with Jimenez turning Soucek’s header into his own net and then, right at the death, Haller nodding home Arthur Masuaku’s cross. If Moyes was to call again, his message would have been simple: job done.