West Ham 2 Stoke City 1:ANY SIDE that can shoot itself in the foot with a slap to the face has serious problems. Stoke arrived at Upton Park with the worst away record in the league and their condition deteriorated drastically despite a hopeful start.
There was no trace of travel sickness when Abdoulaye Faye punished slack West Ham marking by heading a Danny Pugh corner into the net in the fourth minute. A mixture of their own determined defending and wonky finishing by the home side enabled Stoke to cling on to that lead until half-time but their bizarre reaction to the eventual equaliser, scored by Carlton Cole in the 53rd minute, betrayed an alarming fragility.
Ricardo Fuller, who had delayed the start of the second half after putting on the wrong shirt in the changing room, got his knickers in a twist over Cole's goal. The Jamaican was entitled to be angered by the defending of Andy Griffin who, after turning his back on a Scott Parker pass, allowed the ball to break to Cole 10 yards out, but he will regret the fact that he did not simply proceed to take the restart.
Instead he marched 30 yards back to berate Griffin and, despite efforts by team-mates to keep the players apart, then slapped his captain on the chin. Even the Stoke manager, Tony Pulis, did not deny the red card was appropriate. "What does concern me, however, was some of the other decisions," said Pulis. "(Luis) Boa Morte committed two very bad fouls and was only booked for one of them and the winning goal was offside."
That goal arrived in the 88th minute and the scorer, the substitute Diego Tristan, may indeed have been illegally positioned when he diverted a Cole shot past the wrong-footed Thomas Sorensen.
What is certain is that the match would have been settled by then if West Ham had converted an abundance of chances. They had been especially profligate in the first half when Cole, in particular, wasted the invention of Parker and Valon Behrami by continually misdirecting his shots.
That erratic shooting was frequently matched by wasteful crossing, notably by Julien Faubert, who regularly overlapped down the right but never provided a delivery worthy of the effort. Yet with Stoke limited by a lack of ambition or ability, Gianfranco Zola's charges kept pushing forward. Once reduced to 10 men, Stoke shrivelled up even more, Glenn Whelan in particular spurning chances to counter.
West Ham, then, spent most of the match on the front foot and, despite fine displays by Ryan Shawcross and Faye, plus a memorable piece of heroism by Danny Higginbotham, who midway through the second half back-tracked brilliantly to clear a Boa Morte shot off the line, a West Ham winner did not come as a shock.
"This was a big, big turning point for us," said Zola after seeing his side catapult themselves into the top half of the table by ending a run of three home games without a goal. "It had been difficult for us because confidence had got low in our ground and after we missed about seven chances in the first half the nervousness of the crowd could have spread to the players. But I told them that, if they carried on playing in the second period as they had in the first, they'd definitely win."
Pulis announced after the game that he will hold a team meeting today before deciding how to punish Fuller for his second-half indiscretion.
The referee Michael Jones had words with Griffin before showing Fuller a red card. "The funny thing is Rick and Griff get on very well," said Pulis. "But Rick is a very volatile person and I can't condone what he did."
Fuller's dismissal was Stoke's second of the festive period following Andy Wilkinson's red card against Manchester United on St Stephen's Day. Though he did not suggest the referees were wrong on either occasion, Pulis did complain that yesterday's opponents, like United, should have suffered similar depletions.
