Against Sunderland West Ham had to do something that is generally not part of their DNA: graft, sweat and battle

By Mirror Football in West Ham United Fans Blog

Published 15:57 12/04/10

• 

Jacob Steinberg

Relegation dogfights sometimes call for the bloody-minded over the cerebral.

Crude and unappealing to aesthetes it may sound, but the team who survives are generally those who want it more. After Hull City’s 4-1 defeat to Burnley on Saturday, their manager, Iain Dowie, implored his team to show some “cojones”, which is precisely what West Ham have been missing in recent weeks. Until now.

Finally the penny has dropped. Successive home defeats to Bolton Wanderers, Wolves and Stoke City were all characterised by a galling lack of fight, and the decline appeared impossible to arrest.

Those games ought to have seen Gianfranco Zola’s side pull clear of the bottom three; instead they merely deepened the gloom.

Having lost six games in a row, West Ham’s trip to Everton last weekend looked like being extended to seven until Araujo Ilan stepped off the bench to snatch a point with a wonderful headed equaliser.

West Ham’s response at Goodison Park suggested a new togetherness had been fostered in the face of adversity. Ilan’s intervention renewed optimism, yet in this most topsy-turvy of Premier League seasons, fresh hope can disappear as swiftly as it is wrought.

West Ham were still a single point above the relegation zone. As they faced Sunderland at home on Saturday, West Ham would have been aware that Hull were hosting Burnley, notoriously poor travellers.

They could not know Burnley would shock Hull, so nothing less than victory would do. Bullied out of the games with Bolton, Wolves and Stoke, West Ham needed to do something that is generally not part of their DNA: graft. Sweat. Battle. Without the suspended Scott Parker. Against a Sunderland team including the pugnacious Lee Cattermole, who spends most games operating on the very limits of acceptability. A Sunderland team managed by Steve Bruce, hardly noted for his fondness for the east Londoners.

Alan Curbishley, Zola’s predecessor, was viewed as a man who had little time for West Ham’s footballing traditions at heart.

The former Charlton manager was certainly not in favour of the long-ball game, but his teams have hardly ever been swashbuckling. He was not the man for West Ham. Zola replaced him and soon had West Ham playing an effective passing game last season. This year, however, West Ham believed their own hype, stopped doing the basics and began an inexorable slide down the table.

Pragmatism for pragmatism’s sake is surely an unforgivable sin, yet every side needs a happy medium.

Barcelona, who are currently redefining what it means to be an attacking side, spent last week utterly outclassing Arsenal. Yet at Real Madrid on Saturday, they left the Bernabeu with a 2-0 victory thanks to a performance that was as controlled as they had been devastating against Arsenal.

This is not to suggest West Ham, of all teams, should compare themselves to Barcelona, merely to point out that it is prudent to pick and choose when to dazzle your opponents.

 Even Manchester United won the title last year largely on the back of a string of uninspiring 1-0 victories. Sometimes needs must.

West Ham are often uneasy about adopting such practises, preferring always to trade on their reputation as the Academy of Football.

The situation now is desperate however, and it was instructive that Zola has discarded the talented yet erratic Alessandro Diamanti to the bench.

A midfield containing the likes of Mark Noble, Valon Behrami and Radoslav Kovac is never going to win a beauty contest, but they did the job.

Noble, in particular, stood out, if not for the quality of his passing, rather the feistiness of his tackles.

With Parking missing, it was vital someone was willing to put in a few reducers to quell Cattermole.

Behrami and Kovac hassled and harried throughout and in the end Sunderland, scrappers who hoped to kick their way through ninety minutes, were overwhelmed. West Ham won more than half of their tackles; Sunderland lost more than they won.

While West Ham did attempt to impose their passing game on Sunderland, often their radar was skewed, hence the willingness to use Carlton Cole’s brute strength.

The value of a Plan B should never be under-estimated, and Cole often knocked the Sunderland defence out of shape. His presence caused the goalkeeper, Craig Gordon to handle outside the area, Kieran Richardson to nearly give away a goal with a sloppy clearance and then he could have had a penalty when Gordon rugby tackled him. Inexplicably the referee, Mike Jones, ruled Cole had fouled the goalkeeper.

In a shapeless first half however, Cole rarely managed to link up with his partner, Ilan. Bruce revealed he had told his side at half-time that the only way they could concede was from a Cole flick-on.

Graceless stuff, but oddly pre-cognitive. Six minutes into the second half, Cole beat Michael Turner to Manuel Da Costa’s long free-kick, and Ilan stole in to guide the ball beyond an exposed Gordon.

Sunderland responded well and West Ham endured a few nervy moments, not least when Kenywyne Jones slipped a ball to an unmarked Darren Bent. With the goal at his mercy, Bent, mostly anonymous, slipped over and the ball ran harmlessly to a grateful Robert Green.

As Sunderland piled on the pressure, West Ham thought they had sealed the points in stoppage time when Guillermo Franco brought down Julien Faubert’s pass and beat Gordon with a powerful finish.

The relief in the stadium was such that no one had realised that a free-kick had been awarded against Franco for handball. With countless West Ham players out of position, Jones correctly stopped Sunderland taking a quick free-kick. He was wise. An equaliser in such circumstances would potentially have started a riot.

West Ham had ensured this was no day for the faint-hearted.

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