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West Ham 2-0 Rapid Wien: Rice and Benrahma on target as Hammers win


Declan Rice and Said Benrahma were both on target as West Ham won their second successive Europa League fixture, beating Rapid Wien 2-0 at the London Stadium. 

Andriy Yarmolenko and Michail Antonio combined well to set Rice up for a simple, close-range finish in the 29th minute and Benrahma added gloss to the scoreline deep into stoppage time, though the Hammers could have won by an even greater margin.

West Ham manager David Moyes, who made seven changes to the team that snatched a late 2-1 win against Leeds United in the Premier League, saw his men dominate an out-of-sorts Rapid.

The victory sees the London club sit on top of Group H, three points clear of Dinamo Zagreb and Genk.

West Ham started brightly and struck the woodwork twice inside the opening 27 minutes, with Rice glancing Aaron Cresswell's free-kick off one post and Craig Dawson heading the left-back's corner against the other.

Just two minutes after the second of those chances, the Hammers were ahead. Yarmolenko picked out Antonio's run into the box with a ball over the top and the forward squared across goal to Rice, who tapped into an empty net.

Ben Johnson thought he had given a penalty away when Marco Grull went down in the box in the 70th minute, but after a VAR check that lasted nearly three minutes, the original decision was overturned.

Substitute Jarrod Bowen had a golden opportunity to double the advantage with nine minutes of normal time to play, but somehow blasted over after rounding the goalkeeper.

The Hammers' dominance was finally rewarded with a second goal four minutes into added time, however, as Benrahma skipped inside his marker and curled a low shot into the corner to finish the game with a flourish.

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