HALF RICE CLEARANCE

Irons fans leave well before Dec strikes

- JOHN CROSS

YOU really have never seen anything quite like it.

It was Arsenal's biggest ever away win in the Premier League, West Ham fans had left in their thousands by halftime and surely even the celebration police would forgive the visitors enjoying this one.

Bukayo Saka got a brilliant double, exorcised some ghosts of last season and Declan Rice then got the best goal of the lot and did not celebrate out of respect for his old club.

Rice need not have worried. By the time he got Arsenal's sixth goal, most of the West Ham fans had left anyway.

It was West Ham's joint biggest home defeat the six goal margin matching the 8-2 loss to Blackburn in December 1963 and is the sort of humiliation which get managers the sack. There should be no question of that with David Moyes but, at a time when the debate is raging about whether he will get a new contract, it will hurt him deeply because as good as Arsenal were, the Hammers were woeful.

If Arsenal had got one more goal then it would have pushed them up to second place as their goal difference would have overhauled Manchester City.