Hammers Bottle It

At the start of this season, there plenty of pundits prepared to put West Ham United down as hot favourites for an immediate return to the Championship. They were wrong. Alan Pardew’s side’s Premiership status was secured long ago and they’ve played well enough to surprise quite a few so-called experts.

What better opportunity, then, than a trip to Stamford Bridge and a game against the current Champions and runaway Premiership leaders Chelsea to show what they can do. And if it comes with the advantage of an early lead and the dismissal of a Chelsea midfield player soon after, bring it on!

That, unfortunately, was as good as it got. After a tentative start, West Ham surged ahead in the 10th with Collins header from Benayoun’s corner, six minutes later Maniche was red carded and after that the Hammers disintegrated – slowly at first but more embarrassingly as the game went on.

The truth is that Chelsea wanted it more – they had the passion, commitment and fire that West Ham lacked and in a suicidal couple of minutes the Hammers allowed the outstanding Drogba to grab an equaliser and then set up his strike partner Crespo to give Chelsea the lead. After that, the result was never in doubt and it was simply a question of how many Chelsea would score.