Astra Giurgiu 1 West Ham 1: Denis Alibec cancels out Mark Noble penalty to secure 1-1 draw in Europa League qualifying play-off first leg

Early lead: Mark Noble scored from the spot for West Ham
Arfa Griffiths/West Ham United via Getty Images
Vaishali Bhardwaj18 August 2016

West Ham wasted a host of chances to secure victory in their Europa League qualifying play-off first leg against Astra Giurgiu on Thursday as Denis Alibec's late goal handed the Romanian side hope going into the second leg in London next week.

Mark Noble's first-half penalty had looked to seal a narrow 1-0 win for the Hammers but, Slaven Bilic's side failed to convert any of their many chances in the second period, and were punished when Alibec netted from a corner with seven minutes to play.

The big team news ahead of the game was that Slaven Bilic decided to start new loan signing Jonathan Calleri as the lone striker in place of Andy Carroll, and indeed it looked like the right move with the 22-year-old nearly handing the Hammers the lead in the ninth minute.

Noble's cross into the area was headed down by Calleri but he was denied what would have been the perfect start to life at West Ham by the Astra goalkeeper.

The Hammers continued to push forwards, however, and had two superb chances in about as many minutes to score, first when Michail Antonio's bullet header was cleared off the line before Reece Oxford's header flew just over the bar.

Astra, who beat West Ham at the same stage of the Europa League last season, had some good spells going forwards but, in truth, failed to carve out anything of quality as West Ham kept on testing the hosts' defence but continued to struggle to score.

Noble sent a volley from a corner kick over the bar - much to Bilic's dismay - before Reece Burke's effort - another header - was saved by goalkeeper Silviu Lung.

It seemed as though it wasn't West Ham's day until late in the first half when the referee handed the Hammers a penalty kick for Cristian Sapunaru's handball in the area - which Noble coolly slotted in.

Debut: Jonathan Calleri
Arfa Griffiths/West Ham United via Getty Images

The home side emerged from the break with more urgency and indeed were handed the chance to restore parity in the 49th minute when Daniel Niculae headed a cross into the centre of the box which forced Sam Byram to clear the danger before an Astra player could make contact with it.

But West Ham remained in control of the game with Astra being lucky not to have gone down to 10 men after the referee decided against giving Sapunaru a second yellow card for a pull-back on Antonio.

The West Ham forward subsequently had a great opportunity to make it 2-0 after substitute Marcus Browne raced clear of the Astra defence, squared to him before Antonio fired into the side netting.

The miss seemed to spur the hosts on and, with just seven minutes to play, substitute Alibec got onto the end of a corner kick before spinning away from James Collins and firing in from close range to end the game 1-1.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in