Bubbly Sam’s safe...well, for another week

Kaboul’s red card turns the tide

WHEN the match was done and the points were won, the West Ham team performed what was called ‘a lap of appreciation’. A good many fans stayed behind to applaud not only the players but also the manager whose head they were so recently demanding.

The fear of relegation had been emphatically banished, so ‘Bubbles’ was bawled, claret-and-blue banners were waved and a soporific, stressfree summer beckoned.

‘They’re a great bunch of fans,’ declared Sam Allardyce, with a perfectly straight face. The old boy may have been tap dancing on the trapdoor for weeks but he well understands how a win can change the weather.

For Tim Sherwood, the trapdoor opened a good while ago. But he continues his own desperate dance, like some cartoon character, suspended in mid-air before disappearing from view. He declined to blame his players for this abject defeat, said he had no complaint about the red card which cost him the services of Younes Kaboul from the 26th minute and remarked that Upton Park was ‘always a tough place to come’. This may come as some surprise to the nine Premier League teams who have won there this season but nobody had the heart to quibble.

Sherwood knew, better than anyone, that his team had succumbed without the hint of a struggle. They started sluggishly, competed indolently and performed like men for whom Thursday night Europa League chores held no charms at all.

It would be quite unfair to blame one player for a collectively inept performance but Emmanuel Adebayor epitomised Tottenham’s laid-back, shouldershrugging, endlessly lethargic approach. The striker has enjoyed a considerable season but this was a shoddy curtain call.

West Ham were quickly into their stride and dominated the opening 20 minutes without seriously threatening damage but the fluid ease with which Spurs mounted the most promising attack demonstrated their capabilities. Adebayor squandered that chance with a tepid drive.

By common consent, the match turned on the red card. A Spurs attack was disrupted and Stewart Downing was allowed to run from deep at pace. Kaboul was the last defender and, when Downing invited the foul, the Spurs man obliged. For a few moments, it seemed as if referee Phil Dowd was in two minds but West Ham, led by the inevitable Kevin Nolan, screeched for the red card and it was duly waved.

Andy Carroll struck the resulting free-kick with brutal force and the brilliant Hugo Lloris touched it aside. The ball was played deep to Carroll’s head from the corner, the head of Harry Kane jerked reflexively and deflected it into the Spurs goal. The luckless Kane was taken off when Kaboul departed, making room for another defender in Vlad Chiriches. Lloris embarked upon a string of crucial saves as the crowd yelled West Ham forward. Further concession was avoided until the 43rd minute, when Michael Dawson was booked for felling Downing, who whipped the freekick at the wall. What followed was vaguely scandalous. Adebayor and Paulinho flinched from the flight of the ball, opening a gap which should have been closed. Lloris was stranded as it sailed across the line.

‘Wasn’t great, was it?’ admitted Sherwood. ‘They know it was an error. It hurts more when you see the 2-0 than when you get it in the stomach.’

It was impossible to swear that his two players shared that view.

Lloris fought a lone hand, while Carroll’s every touch was greeted with clamorous delight by his fans. However limited, he at least made unsparing attempts to involve himself in the contest; snorting, stamping, trampling the field like a deranged shire horse. It was a display which provoked one or two pundits to press for his place in Roy Hodgson’s World Cup party. It is a patently bizarre notion. Carroll entered this match with two goals in 13 appearances this season. He left it with two in 14. Brazil may have to do without him.

Sherwood cajoled and pleaded and demanded more from his men. His pleas were curtly ignored. Above him, high in the stand, sat his stony-faced chairman Daniel Levy. It felt as if the manager was being put through a test he had long since failed and it was not a pleasant sight. But then, there was very little pleasing about Tottenham yesterday. Instead, the satisfaction belonged to West Ham and their manager, reprieved for at least another week.

‘We’ve sent the fans home happy,’ drooled Allardyce, his face cracking into something like a smile. Three points and safety can have that effect.