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Alex Kral made his Hammers competitive debut at Old Trafford last night and didn't disappoint, he had big shoes to step in as effectively he 'carried' skipper Mark Noble through the match and played in the stead of his compatriot Tomas Soucek and Declan Rice.

Hammers fans often scoff at the success of Chelsea and Manchester City, citing the only reason those teams do well is the extraordinary amount of money they have access to in order to blow other clubs out of the water in their transfer dealings. That may well be the case, however neither team seemed to have spent as much time at Drama school as either Manchester United or Liverpool, with the former being the most active Thespians of a bad bunch.

Well, who'd have thought that? Many people, including ourselves, didn't give Hammers a prayer for tonight's game against Manchester United at a packed Old Trafford. Hammers 'glorified' B team, as Mark Noble described it in his post match presser, was totally outclassed by that of Utd's on paper, but as the old saying goes "football is not played on paper, it is played on the field" and so it proved.