Was that enough? The reports had suggested that West Ham would review Julen Lopetegui’s future over the international break if West Ham lost. They avoided that but, other than the fact they picked up another point, inching their way towards safety next May, was a featureless goalless draw really so much better?
This was, for long periods, a terrible game and, while West Ham will probably feel they had the better of the chances, certainly after half-time, when Jarrod Bowen curled a shot just wide, Crysencio Summerville hit the post and Danny Ings drew two fine saves out of Jordan Pickford but, still, nobody could call this a performance that made an undeniable case for Lopetegui to stay on.
A fanbase that had become largely frustrated by the football produced under David Moyes towards the end of his second tenure was not ploughing home through the shoppers in Westfield with joy in their hearts. The most memorable moment was probably a right-foot first-time 25-yard shot taken on by Vitalii Mykolenko that was so badly sliced it barely made the box.
“We deserved to win with the chances we had, especially in the second half,” said Lopetegui. “We kept a clean sheet and had enough chances to win the match. The first half, we lost 45 minutes. We can do better with the energy and the attitude. We have to have the personality to make the right decisions.”
The setting matched the dismal mood. It was a damply raw November afternoon, a fine mist illuminated by the floodlights as the cabin at the top of Anish Kapoor’s Orbital loomed in the greyness like a Soviet-era ski-lodge. It was subdued and cold and sad and weary, the awareness of past glories and a knowledge of the distance these present iterations are from them weighing on everybody. Even the setting of Land of Hope and Glory favoured by the military band before kick-off was oddly discordant.
There were mishit passes, misplaced passes, misconceived passes and passes to nobody at all. When the press box monitors went off in the first half, it felt like an act of kindness. At times in the opening period the game reached the specific pitch of tedium at which people begin to wonder how Thilo Kehrer’s been getting on since he left West Ham for Monaco.
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West Ham have moved into one of those phases where everything is going wrong. Money was spent in the summer – £130m of it – but few of those signings have settled as yet. Inevitably, Tim Steidten, the technical director who had such an awkward relationship with Moyes, has come under scrutiny.
Good players – Bowen, Lucas Paquetá and Mohammed Kudus – are out of sorts. Lopetegui has convinced nobody he is the man to lead the club into a bright post-Moyes future.
Discipline has become a major problem, with Kudus banned for five games after his antics towards the end of the defeat to Tottenham, while Edson Álvarez picked up a stupid second yellow at Nottingham Forest, before offering an apt visual metaphor for West Ham’s season by losing his way to the tunnel.
Occasionally Summerville, one of the summer signings who has shown occasional flickers of promise, would go on a little run, his whirring legs a pleasing distraction from the general drabness, although his most decisive contribution was probably his charge back to block after Idrissa Gueye had released Abdoulaye Doucouré.
Had there been slightly more pace on the pass, or had Doucouré been prepared to take on the shot first time, he might not have had the opportunity.
“It was a good point, a good clean sheet, a solid performance,” said Sean Dyche, “but we couldn’t really find that bit of edge, that bit of devil, that bit of quality in the final third.”
Only in the final minutes before the break did anybody look like scoring, Pickford denying first Bowen and then Michail Antonio. That was the prelude for a more open second half, but the bar was low.
A point apiece may end up being very useful in dragging both clubs towards mid-table but the idea that 60,000 willingly turned up to watch is, frankly, mind-boggling.
