Negative West Ham deserved to lose to Everton

Everton's Romelu Lukaku shoots to score his team's opening goal (Image: EMPICS Sport)

It had to come an end sooner or later didn’t it? The glorious winning run is over.

The performance at Goodison wasn’t an inspiring one and in the end Big Sam’s gang got exactly what they deserved for a very negative performance.

It was clear Sam ventured up to the blue half of Merseyside to contain Everton and sneak a 0-0 and for 80 odd minutes it was working a treat as the Hammers dealt very comfortably with the majority of Everton’s attacks.

However just as at Upton Park in the first fixture contested between the two clubs this season; it was the introduction of Romelu Lukaku that swung the game in Everton’s favour.

The performance at Goodison was good from a defensive point of view; apart from Lukaku’s winner Everton rarely looked like scoring, but from an attacking standpoint the Hammers were woeful. Over hit/under hit crosses were the order of the day from Messrs Downing and Jarvis and whether it was Carlton Cole or Andy Carroll leading the line; the service from our wide men was truly woeful. Ball retention in general was extremely poor from the away side.

When you’re on a winning run, it’s very difficult to make changes to the side, ‘never change a winning team’ is a cliché doled out by managers the length and breadth of the country; the trouble with this stance is that you cannot make a change until you lose.

Now that we have lost I hope Sam gives a chance to the likes of Pablo Armero and Antonio Nocerino as they’re players who can definitely add some verve, guile and quality to the team.

We’re seven points clear of the drop zone with 10 games to go; a position that seemed unlikely at the start of the year when we were losing limply at Craven Cottage.

We still need a couple of wins to be sure but it’s very hard to see us falling back into trouble from this position.

The frustrating thing is that with the Hull game being postponed we now have no game for two weeks; so this result and performance will fester with the squad up until a tricky looking fixture at the Britannia on March 15.

I’m confident we’ll see an improved performance at Stoke; big Sam seems to sit back against certain teams away from home and take the game to others...Stoke will definitely fall into that latter camp, so here’s hoping we get back to winning ways in the Potteries.