West Ham 1 Arsenal 2:A TEAM OF real ambition must be impervious to romance. Arsenal hardened their hearts and made their superiority tell just when it seemed they might somehow fail to respond to the opener from West Ham. The home side, striving to stay in the Premier League, have greater priorities, yet the effort to take a fillip from this FA Cup tie was great.

While both line-ups were under strength, West Ham’s resources are more slender and the challenge they posed was therefore impressive. It took Arsene Wenger’s team much of the afternoon to rediscover their incisiveness. By the end, though, Carlos Vela had become the embodiment of such menace. As West Ham betrayed some fatigue at last, the Mexican fed Aaron Ramsey in the 79th minute and the composed Welshman put a finish past Robert Green. Victory for the visitors verged on the inevitable.

“In the last 10 or 15 minutes I knew we were going to go down physically because we had worked so hard,” said the West Ham manager, Gianfranco Zola.

With seven minutes left, Eduardo da Silva got free of Matthew Upson to meet Vela’s cross from the left and head the winner. “In every game, he is better,” said Wenger of an attacker whose career is still couched in terms of recovery from the dreadful leg injuries in early 2008 that kept him out of action until a protracted comeback got under way a year later.

Nothing can make Wenger fret for the time being and he smiled at the prospect of the challenge Arsenal will meet when they go to Stoke City in the fourth round. “I hope it will not be windy,” he said wryly, while anticipating the opposition’s direct style.

The manager sees a gathering prowess at his disposal. “I set him [Ramsey] a target at the start of the season to play between 15 and 20 games and it looks like he will get that very quickly,” said Wenger. In fact, Ramsey, who turned 19 on St Stephen’s Day, has made 24 appearances for Arsenal in this campaign.

Wenger was wry over the lightening of the load at Manchester United now that they have been eliminated from the FA Cup by Leeds United. As he pointed out, Alex Ferguson’s team has a free weekend before the last 16 of the Champions League gets under way on February 16th.

By that midweek, when Arsenal take on Porto, February will already have seen Wenger’s side face Chelsea and Liverpool in the league as well as fulfilling a likely FA Cup engagement. These must seem like enviably exotic considerations to Zola, but he does not look all that apprehensive about his circumstances.

The Italian claims to have been reassured that he will not need to off-load players this month despite the much-reported financial predicament of West Ham. “I think we have stability,” he said. “I am not expecting to have anybody leaving.”

Despite the diminished nature of the line-up, they seldom looked discouraged until that closing phase. Arsenal’s opportunities were restricted for a long time and when Green palmed out a Jack Wilshere cross after 30 minutes Thomas Vermaelen lashed the ball high. This was not one of those days when Wilshere’s precocity shines and Wenger intends to send him out on loan, but that move will not be authorised until late this month when injuries have cleared.

The visitors were unsure of themselves initially when West Ham bristled with competitiveness. Other chances for the visitors had arisen from mistakes, too, and a loose pass from the defender James Tomkins, for instance, set up Eduardo, only for the Croatia forward to fire straight at the goalkeeper.

The cobbled-together West Ham line-up in which the teenage striker Frank Nouble was making his first start, was heartened. They also took the lead in first-half stoppage time. A Wilshere mistake left the influential Valon Behrami to put Alessandro Diamanti through for a composed finish.

West Ham tried to avoid the defensiveness that would have invited Arsenal to swamp them. The attitude was epitomised in the neat way Nouble got himself into position after 48 minutes, although the finish was weak. Arsenal had a the greater incentive to be adventurous, but the impression lingered that the lack of a suitable central attacker, with Robin van Persie a long-term injury, continues to be a potentially grave flaw.

Arsenal struggled to show incisiveness in the goalmouth but when the visitors did go clear in the 72nd minute, Green made a double save from the substitute Abou Diaby and Alex Song. Ultimately the command of Arsenal was to prove irresistible.