West Ham suffered a major blow to their Champions League hopes as Everton breathed renewed life into their own with a hard-fought 1-0 win at the London Stadium on Super Sunday.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin scored the crucial goal on 24 minutes as he latched onto Ben Godfrey’s through ball to steer his low shot beyond Lukasz Fabianski.
The visitors’ goal led a charmed life at times, with Said Benrahma missing a glorious first-half chance before Vladimir Coufal struck the inside of the post after the interval.
Everton stay in eighth place, but move to within three points of their opponents in fifth, with their game in hand against Aston Villa taking place on Thursday evening, live on Sky Sports.
How Everton raided the East End
This was the last game at the London Stadium without supporters. When Southampton are the visitors on the final day of the season, there will be 10,000 season-ticket holders in the stands.
The residents will find out then if a fine season will be rewarded with European football, but three defeats in West Ham’s last four league games has made the prospect of this stadium being graced by Champions League opponents increasingly unlikely.
Everton arrived having lost just one of their previous 12 away league meetings with the Hammers, and they very nearly found the early breakthrough when Gylfi Sigurdsson’s corner was flicked towards Calvert-Lewin at the far post but Tomas Soucek was in the right place to head clear.
