Bad day at the office....

Not quite what we expected at Upton Park yesterday, but certainly no need for an over the top reaction.  Bolton came down and played their ugly football in an effective way that will ensure their safety but probably not see them on Sky Sports too often.

For me, a few points in my preview were borne out, one positive, one negative.  Start on the plus side and that is the presence of Mr Heritha Illunga.  By far our man of the match, Illunga is strong, calm in possession and a good distributor of the ball, he had an excellent game.  On the down side, I don’t think this Behrami/Faubert combination is working and something has to change.  In retrospect, with Bolton’s penchant for long balls, we should have gone with Upson and Davenport in the middle and Neill on the right.  Faubert is not defensive minded and clearly wanted to get forward more than he was allowed to.  If anything Behrami is the better defender of the two, though he was also effective in the middle of the park.

The other issue is that of Robert Green and his performance.  My view is that Robert Green is a superb goalkeeper and even superb goalkeepers make mistakes.  I even think it was only the first goal for which he is truly to blame, the second was a great stop and unfortunate rebound, the third to be fair was a quality strike.  Anyone who booed Green can push off down to White Hart Lane to be honest, where the true fickle supporters find their home.  We still love you Rob, so keep on doing what you are doing.  Right, ratings time;

Green – 4  - sorry Rob, in spite of the above, it was not a great day for you
Illunga – 8 – strong game, excellent in this position
Upson – 5 – not a great game from Matt, never really got to grips with the long balls in
Neill – 6 – got involved and rarely exerted real authority
Faubert – 5 – some wasted distribution but really think we are not making the best of him in this position
Parker – 6 – nice touches and tried to get involved but no real authority
Noble – 4 – one of his worst games in a Hammers shirt for me, didn’t do anything very well, it’s bad when I was shouting for Mullins to come on and stamp some authority on the midfield
Behrami – 7 – ran like a demon and tried to make things happen, just not his day
Etherington – 6 – tried hard but very little penetration
Di-Michele – 5 – seemed to give up after a while
Cole – 6 – some appalling touches but did get on the scoresheet

Zola/Clarke - 5 – they got well and truly done by Gary Megson here.  I didn’t like a 3 man midfield against a 5 man one and some of the players looked unsure what to do.  Like I say, we’ll let them have a bad day at the office.  And Spurs are still bottom, so not all bad!