PREM: Everton 1-3 West Ham

Marko Arnautovic celebrates scoring West Ham's third

West Ham finally won their first Premier League game of the season as Andriy Yarmolenko's first-half double saw them beat Everton 3-1 at Goodison Park on Sunday.

Yarmolenko gave West Ham an 11th-minute lead with his first goal for the club, before doubling the visitors' advantage with a delightful curler just past the half-hour mark.

However, Gylfi Sigurdsson's bullet header gave Everton a lifeline in first-half injury time - the attacker's first league strike since February - only for Marko Arnautovic's third goal of the season to restore his side's two-goal cushion after 61 minutes.

 

As a result, the Hammers jumped up from the bottom of the table to 16th, while Everton stay in 10th place having won only once so far this campaign.

West Ham may have come into this match still looking for their first points of the season, but Manuel Pellegrini's side started on the front foot at a flat Goodison, their minds perhaps cleared after the recent international break.

 

The visitors opened the scoring early on as Pedro Obiang's ball over the top released Arnautovic, with the Austria international unselfishly squaring for Yarmolenko to sweep home his first goal since December 2017.

Just like waiting for London buses, the Ukraine international - making his first Premier League start since his summer move from Borussia Dortmund - then added a second after 31 minutes.

 

Jordan Pickford's poor clearance was intercepted by the alert Mark Noble, who found Yarmolenko on the right edge of the area. However, the winger still had a lot of work to do to score, only to cut inside Kurt Zouma and Lucas Digne, before curling an unstoppable effort into the far corner.

With the home fans starting to fret, though, Everton got back into the contest just before the break as Sigurdsson met Jonjoe Kenny's inch-perfect cross from the right with an unstoppable header.

But if the home faithful thought that goal would be a catalyst for a second-half revival, they were mistaken with West Ham the next scorers just past the hour-mark.

 

Again Obiang and Arnautovic linked up well with a neat one-two on the edge of the area, with the latter finishing confidently, the 12th goal the forward has been involved in for his team in their last 11 away encounters.

Marco Silva, who suffered his first defeat as Everton manager, will no doubt point to a host of chances wasted by out-of-form striker Cenk Tosun, while his replacement in attack - Oumar Niasse - also hit the bar late on.

But anything other than a first league win at the fifth time of asking would have been cruel on Pellegrini, who got the perfect 65th birthday present.