Portsmouth 1 West Ham Utd 4:WEST HAM, inspired by Craig Bellamy, beat Portsmouth for the first time in the Premier League in an extraordinary game of football here yesterday.
The score could easily have been the other way round in a match in which the nervousness of both defences bordered on the neurotic and where the goals might have been jotted down in double figures.
Before the match the one essential difference between these sides was that West Ham were in a relegation scrap while Portsmouth's crisis was still a few weeks away. Or so it seemed.
After their third successive defeat, Portsmouth's troubles are very much in the here and now. They have taken one point out of a possible 12 in December, while West Ham had won just one game in 12 and were perched above the drop zone. But their football has been better than their results in recent weeks and although they struggled at times yesterday Bellamy, who scored twice, had the cutting edge of a razor.
"The way he trains, the things he does, he is spot on," said the relieved West Ham manager, Gianfranco Zola. "He can be really dangerous. He might have been affected by all the talk about him. I don't want to sell him. I'm very pleased to have him playing for West Ham."
It is understood West Ham have rejected a €6.2 million bid for Bellamy from Tottenham. There will be more attempts to prise him away from Upton Park next month and the same speculation surrounds Matthew Upson.
And, of course, the club itself is up for sale and about as secure as a sandcastle.
But a smiling Zola added: "This was very good, fantastic for us. The team deserved to win today. It was a very close game and they were close to winning too."
His mood contrasted with Tony Adams's forlorn features. The Pompey manager said: "We need to fight and scrap because we're in the [relegation] pack now. We're getting done on the counter-attack, which is worrying. We need one or two new players, reinforcements, but it's not easy because the cub is in transition and we've still got to pay for some of the players we have here."
Portsmouth took the lead in the ninth minute. Glenn Little crossed to Peter Crouch who, just beyond the far post, cut it back for the unmarked Nadir Belhadj to score simply from 10 yards.
West Ham equalised in the 22nd minute when Carlton Cole put in Jack Collison to score his second goal of the season, with David James unsighted in the Pompey goal.
With neither side possessing a defensive midfield player capable of shielding his back four, Portsmouth losing Lassana Diarra to Real Madrid this week, chances came aplenty.
Jermain Defoe shot wide, Robert Green made an outstanding save from Crouch and at the other end Sol Campbell headed Mark Noble's 44th-minute effort off the line with James grounded. But Portsmouth really should have gone ahead at the end of the half when Defoe missed a penalty after Lucas Neill's foul on Crouch.
Cole put West Ham ahead in the 67th minute after Collison had hit the post, before Bellamy's double sealed the match in the visitors' favour and, in turn, almost certainly alerted potential suitors to his mercurial talents.
Zola reiterated his desire to keep hold of Bellamy. "He scored two very important goals for us and hopefully he'll keep scoring goals for us. There's so much speculation but, as far as I'm concerned, he's our player.
"It's as simple as that. He's a very important player and is enjoying a very good moment. The club knows I don't want to sell Bellamy and we have had a total understanding right from the start.
"With all the talking around him, another player might have been affected. But he's a professional and is very good.
"For me, I think he can be even better than he was today."
Adams described his team as "too eager to win a game". "It was a strange game," he said. "We struggled to accept that it was a dull game and we were struggling to break them down, and we tried to throw everything at it to try and win.
"We've had two very bad results at home and a bad performance at Bolton and we need to put things right."
• Guardian Service
