“Arsenal win keeps West Ham bottom”

The words "Arsenal win keeps West Ham bottom" would not usually be enough to prompt a howl of anguish, followed by the ubiquitious obscenity unsuitable for a family website. No, not even for my best friend Mike, who supports West Ham. But when you have visited various members of your Arsenal supporting family on Saturday evening and sworn them to silence, avoided your auntie’s Sunday morning Observer and then made a superhuman effort to avoid the backpages of any newspapers on the Piccadilly Line into central London in order to watch the game game in blissful ignorance on your return home… When you have done all that, only to have your attention caught, the very second you step onto the concourse at Charing Cross, by the movement of the electronic screen displaying Sky’s rolling news headlines and the headline happens to be the one telling you Arsenal have won, I think a howl of anguish followed by an unprintable obscenity is at least permissable and, probably, understandable.

The woman whose Sunday afternoon reverie I’d so abruptly interrupted certainly seemed to think so anyway. As I acknowledged at the time, I guess the good thing was that we had returned to winning ways, keeping track with Manchester City and closing the gap on Manchester United, a gap that would stay narrowed when they could only draw at Spurs. I’m not really interested, two days later, in going through a blow by blow account of what was a comfortable evening at Upton Park, but a couple of things need to be touched on, I think.

The first thing to say is that although West Ham were deprived of the services of the combative Parker, I’m not sure they would have got anywhere near us had he been available. Because when the likes of Fabregas, Nasri, van Persie, Walcott and, to a lesser extent, Wilshere and Song are in the kind of mood they were in, they come pretty close to unplayable. In this country at least. What can you say about a midfielder who has more touches of the ball than the entire midfield of the opposition in one half of football? To call Cesc a midfield general doesn’t quite do him justice, he was supreme here. But we also saw the importance of Nasri and his awareness of others, his spatial awareness. Robin van Persie’s smartly taken right foot opener (which would have been a great finish on his left foot, by the way) would not have been possible without Nasri’s dummy to open the space up. Okay, it wouldn’t have been possible without a hapless Wayne Bridge allowing Theo Walcott time to ring for a pizza before delivering his cross, but that isn’t the point I’m trying to make here.

Wilshere may not have done anything that stands out particularly, but I love the way he can open the space ahead of him with just a drop of his shoulder- watch him and watch how many times he does this. Reading around various websites, there seems to be a consensus that he’s a bit undeserving of the hype around him- what the consensus may not take into account is the fact that he’s not in the team to try and dribble around 5 players every time he gets the ball, he’s there do a job and he does it well. It struck me yesterday that, in comparison to his first league start at Anfield, 5 months ago, he’s come on leaps and bounds.

It would be wrong not to highlight the architects of West Ham’s downfall and were it not for van Persie’s perennial bad luck with the posts- why do his shots never go in off the post?- we’d be talking about a deserved hat trick for a player who quite clearly had his best game since returning from injury. As it was he had to content himself with two, adding an expertly taken penalty to his first half goal and the assist for Theo Walcott’s tenth goal of the season. Ten goals for Theo eh? That’s pretty impressive and highlights his increasing importance to the Arsenal first team. But when he wasn’t losing Wayne Bridge to bang home with his left foot, he was setting up the opener, winning the penalty from a clearly confused Bridge. And you could see the confusion in Bridge’s eyes, you could see it as he put off his misery late in the second half and was led off the pitch muttering to himself like survivor of a bomb blast. More like that please, Theo? Back to Robin though and what struck me about his performance is how adeptly he knits our attack together when he plays up front- and plays well. We look a different team with him in it. For all my support of Nicklas Bendtner, it surely can’t be a coincidence that it’s only when the Dane plays that we appear to have no focal point to our attack? Even Chamakh brings something to the table in that sense.

I didn’t think Djourou had a great game, in fact you’d say it was as bad as he’s played for a couple of months, perhaps three games of Eboue next to him have taken their toll. I can certainly forgive him the slip that let in Carlton Cole at 1-0; a) because it is untypical of how he’s played of late and; b) because Wojciech Szczesny bailed him out with a Schmeicelish save in another confident display between the sticks. If I’m Arsène Wenger, though, I’d be worried about placing too much strain on Djourou- especially having pinpointed his injury record as a reason not to overplay him. We need reinforcement soon, especially as the Vermaelen situation continues with the player not likely to be available till March at the earliest.

The final thing I want to touch on is the attitude of the team. There was a confident swagger to the Arsenal on Saturday, perhaps helped by the early goal, but it was backed up the way the players worked for their platform to perform. Okay, West Ham aren’t the greatest side in the world, but neither are Ipswich or Leeds. The boss needs to keep reinforcing the idea that every game was must be treated with the same 100% concentration and determination. If the players apply themselves fully in the games ahead, then perhaps we’ll avoid situations like having to go to a midweek replay at Elland Road and we can look forward to battering Ipswich next week. Perhaps.

Oh, by the way, did anyone notice what the score was when Denilson came on?