West Ham 0 Sp#rs 2

Two embarrassingly poor sides were on show tonight. West Ham despite dominating much of the early possession in each half just look impotent going forward.

I think Zola has introduced some sort of fine system for players putting the ball in the opposition's penalty area. It must be about ten games now since a West Ham player has crossed a ball into the box. Surely the only reason they can be scared of crossing is because they get fined if they do it.

Against Gomez, a keeper who is awful with crosses and whose confidence is shot, and with Cole, a player who has some presence in the air you would have thought West Ham would be peppering the Sp#rs box with crosses. But West Ham just played everything through the middle.

Even when West Ham got freekicks in the Sp#rs' half Parker, instead of putting the ball in the box passed the ball back to West Ham's own half and back to the West Ham defence. Why, why, why?


Sp#rs on the otherhand, even though they were up against Collins and Upson, who are good in the air, seemed to realise that you don't get goals without putting the ball in the box. So despite having about a third as much possession as West Ham, when they did get the ball they put it in the box and were therefore always the more likely to score. And guess what - they opened the scoring when Lennon crossed for Bent.

At least when Noble came on some of the West Ham corners and freekicks were actually crossed into the box and some actually managed to beat the first man. It was from a Noble corner that Di Michele might have snatched a draw but somehow Gomez and the Sp#rs defence managed to hold out and promptly went up the other end of the pitch and scored.

All in all a shocking performance from a team looking bereft of passion and ideas.