Manchester United are such unwelcoming hosts these days that West Ham could be excused if they had arrived at Old Trafford wondering whether to leave their coach outside with the engine running.
This was as predictable a result as they come, although there are still a couple of matters to clear up - one for the Premiership's Dubious Goals Committee and, in Glenn Roeder's case, one for the Dubious Results Committee, otherwise known as West Ham's board.
Roeder does not subscribe to the theory that West Ham are too good to go down, which is just as well because the evidence here would suggest they are too bad to stay up.
He will not resign - not this side of Christmas anyway - but he will be squirming with discomfort as he watches Terry Venables come under the scrutiny at Bolton tonight. Venables might find himself out of work if Leeds's season takes another turn for the worse and Bolton's trip to Upton Park on Saturday could have similar ramifications for Roeder.
Right now his second season in charge is one of crisis management and hard-luck stories. His best strikers are injured, he has one of the smallest squads in the Premiership, little money for reinforcements and there will be more hostile headlines this morning. It reeks of crisis.
Roeder is a manager shorn of good fortune, too. Ignoring, for one moment, Sebastien Schemmel's own-goal and the decisive deflection from Tomas Repka that means Ole Gunnar Solskjaer might yet have the opening goal taken away from him, Roeder will also reflect on the trigger-happy linesman who denied Jermain Defoe a legitimate goal with the score at 2-0 and, even more inexplicably, the penalty that should have followed Phil Neville's flooring of Defoe in the opening exchanges.
The sight of the referee Rob Styles scurrying away from the point of contact might remind West Ham's followers of a passage in Paolo Di Canio's autobiography in which he complains that "referees have a natural and perhaps involuntary allegiance to the bigger club," a condition that is known in Italy as sudditanza psicologica - psychological subjection.
"To get a penalty at Old Trafford someone needs to take out a machine gun and riddle you full of bullets," says Di Canio.
Di Canio may have a point. Certainly, with an annual retainer of £33,000 and £500 match fees, Styles should not put himself in the position where he faces allegations of cowardice or myopia.
These, however, are only side issues. West Ham and their supporters are entitled to be aggrieved but few could present a reasonable case that they ever looked capable of preventing United's seventh successive win.
"We couldn't find a weakness,' said Roeder. "You look at their bench and David Beckham, the England captain, is sitting there. Then you look at ours and we've had to include Anton Ferdinand (Rio's brother). I'm sure one day he will make it, but he's only 17 and still a year or so away from this level. We've got a tiny squad and we're in a hole, a big hole."
Alex Ferguson tried to be equally complimentary about West Ham, but there lingered the suspicion these were just routine niceties on his part. The truth of the matter is that this was an afternoon shrouded in drowsy predictability once Juan Sebastian Veron had added to Solskjaer's deflected header with the sumptuous free-kick that provided the game's peak.
Beckham left Old Trafford with an ice pack strapped to his knee, but this was described as only a precautionary measure, while Roy Keane hopes to play for the reserves on Thursday and might be back at Blackburn on Sunday.
MAN UTD: Barthez, Gary Neville, Brown, Silvestre, O'Shea (Blanc 73), Solskjaer (Beckham 45), Veron, Phil Neville, Giggs, Scholes (Forlan 73), van Nistelrooy. Subs Not Used: Ricardo, Richardson. Goals: Solskjaer 15, Veron 17, Schemmel 61 og.
WEST HAM: James, Minto (Breen 89), Repka, Dailly, Schemmel, Sinclair, Carrick, Lomas (Moncur 85), Cole, Defoe, Pearce. Subs Not Used: Bywater, Camara, Ferdinand. Booked: Repka.
Referee: R Styles (Hampshire).
