Three points yesterday and the first part of the London derby double overcome successfully.
For a while it looked as if West Ham might frustrate us. Another good performance from Robert Green and the woodwork made it a bit anxious but in the end I thought we deserved the points.
Adebayor was rested so Bendtner and van Persie started up front and Sylvester kept his place in defence – alongside Gallas this time. I thought we started a bit slowly, there wasn’t enough pace to our play, and when we did inject some through Theo we nearly scored. His shot cannoned off the bar much to the frustration of Bendtner who was waiting at the far post for a tap in.
Then Robert Green got away with handling the ball well outside his area. The linesman didn’t see the offence but I suspect the fact that he looked about 60 might have had something to do with it. Then when Green went on to make a series of very good saves you started to think we might pay the price for another poor piece of officiating. Like the Adebayor goal against Hull and the van Persie goal at Sunderland it could have been very costly. Green saved brilliantly from Theo Walcott and later on from Bendtner.
The goalkeeping heroics weren’t confined to the one end though. West Ham broke quickly and Craig Bellamy was clean through only for Almunia to make an excellent stop with his legs. It’s amazing to see the difference between Almunia now and the Almunia that first came to the club. Talk about chalk and cheese. The big Spaniard has been in fine form this season and looks as good as anyone else in this league to me.
The second half was frustrating again despite us being very much in control, I thought. We looked pretty solid at the back, for the most part, but when van Persie’s free kick smashed off the post I did begin to think we might not do it. Diaby and Adebayor had come on for Walcott and Nasri and Adebayor really made a difference. It was his shot that Faubert deflected into his own goal to give us the lead after 75 minutes and he doubled the advantage after latching on to Bendtner’s fantastic long pass with just a couple of minutes to go.
Overall it was a solid performance against a West Ham team that made life very difficult for us. They defended well and worked hard. We got a bit of a luck for the opener but after some of the things that have gone against us in recent weeks you can’t say we didn’t have it coming.
With Liverpool’s win over Chelsea it was so important that we won. It leaves us 4 behind the scouse leaders, just 1 behind Chelsea and 4 ahead of United who have a game in hand. The manager called it a ‘big win’ and goalscorer Adebayor believes we’re right back in the title race, saying:
We believe we can win the title. We had something to prove here and West Ham made it very hard for us. But we’re happy and pleased. Now we must focus on the derby with Spurs on Wednesday.
True words. With our North London rivals enjoying their best run of form for a long, long time we’ve got to put this game behind us and concentrate on Wednesday night.
Sorry for the short blog today but it’s a bank holiday here and I have to bring Mrs Blogs into town. For some reason she has decided that it’s a good idea to run 26 miles in the Dublin City Marathon. Crazy lady but good luck to her!
More tomorrow.
