West Ham chewed up by hungry Everton toffees.

West Ham chewed up by hungry Everton toffees.

For the small contingent of West Ham supporters at Goodison Park last night this was one of the occasions where you simply wanted to close your eyes, look at the ground and think of more pressing issues. Most of the claret and blue huddle on Merseyside must have been cursing their decision to jump onto a train or into a car and make that nightmarishly long journey from East London to Merseyside to support their struggling, angst ridden team.

But they did make it in the end and such loyalty and devotion to the cause was almost rashly overlooked by a West Ham team who, quite clearly, seem to be going nowhere fast and sinking deeper into the quicksand of relegation. For some of us this is such a familiar story that some of us already know how the book ends. We may hope that everybody lives happily ever after but the suspicion is that it'll end in tears, tantrums and boardroom upheaval is too well founded

What we had at Goodison was a spicy reunion of one former player with his old club, a manager who had now returned to his former stomping ground and a manager in waiting who used to be charge of last opponents. Football loves its coincidences and quirky back stories but this was too much to take in the space of 90 minutes of football.

In the blue Everton corner there was David Unsworth, formerly a tall, strapping central defender for West Ham for whom opposing forwards feared to tread. Last night Unsworth was back on his hometown guiding Everton in a caretaker capacity. By the end of this game Unsworth could lock up the gates, drop the keys into his pocket and then store away the bucket and mop. His job had been done and none could have asked anymore of him. This caretaker manager malarkey isn't that bad and he could probably could get used to it but Everton had other ideas.

In the claret and blue corner there was David Moyes, formerly the consistently and impressively successful manager of Everton. Moyes was back at Goodison cobbling together the broken pieces of a West Ham side who at the moment look like a team in sharp decline, accidentally slipping down some stairs but trying to avoid the bumping and rolling towards the ground floor.

After three Premier League matches in charge Moyes is beginning to look almost as haunted as he was with Sunderland and nobody could stop them from relegation to the Championship.When Sir Alex Ferguson recommended Moyes as his replacement at Manchester United the whole footballing community must have thought Fergie had been reading too many fairy stories. But as usual Ferguson always know best or at least thinks he does.

Once everything went disastrously wrong for Moyes at United it was widely felt that Moyes would never ever be employed by any football club again. The fit was entirely wrong at United and the former Preston boss was too wet behind the ears for professional football management. United were a big, plush, wealthy and world renowned football team for whom Moyes was not the man to take them to an even more exalted level than they already were.

And then there is Sam Allardyce. Now the movements of Sam Allardyce are a fascinating study into the mindset of a modern day football manager. For years Allardyce took Bolton Wanderers to such rarefied heights that even Nat Lofthouse would have been deeply envious. But Allardyce was never a footballing purist and that was the point when Allardyce was told to leave by the back door and told to shut it in no uncertain terms.The presence of Jay Jay Ockocha at Bolton still sounds like some weirdly incongruous chapter in the club's history but it did happen.

On a freezing cold night by the Mersey it was thought Everton would be permanently anchored on the docks such was the prevailing mood of pessimism. After they were thumped by Southampton at St. Mary's some of the Everton fans must have been tempted to throw a lifeboat at the players. These are stressful and worrying times at Goodison and after the departure of Ronald Koeman the ranks of disgruntled blue were about to throw their team overboard.

Last night was another demonstration of football at its most unpredictable and capricious. Everton and West Ham were stuck firmly in the Premier League relegation mud and muck. It can never be easy when your team suddenly find themselves trapped in a corner they simply can't escape from no matter how hard they tried.

Finally though the defensive rock of Ashley Williams, blended effectively with Jonjoe Kenny, Mason Holgate and Idrissa Gueye. Finally Everton had finally managed to tune into the same wavelength as each other without any interference from know all foreign owners. It was interesting to note though that Everton had one Farhad Moshiri looking down quizzically from the director's box. Oh for the days when football chairmen wore bowler hats, waistcoats and were the principal owners of local timber merchants.

Next to Moshiri was Bill Kenwright who knows a good deal more about smoking chimneys and cobbled streets on Coronation Street which gives him a perfect insight into football's industrial past. Then there was Sam Allardyce, once heavily criticised and maligned by the football boo boys who insist that football should have a strong hint of caviar rather than steak and kidney pie pragmatism.

Recently Allardyce began to develop a reputation for collecting football clubs rather than the most hardened coin operator. In no time to all Allardyce paid a flying visit to West Ham, Sunderland and Crystal Palace in quick succession before finally landing up with the England job. We all know what happened there. Allardyce, whose childhood dream was to be the boss of the England football team was cunningly drawn into a honey trap from which there was no way out.

In a secret hotel bar, Allardyce was the victim of the ultimate of stings, the victim of circumstances and a man whose integrity was fatally undermined by hush hush taped interviews and what seemed like financial jiggery pokery. Poor Sam. He may have been sadly naive and gullible but that almost seems to come with the football management manual at times.

Anyway Allardyce 's new Everton team did much to endear him to the Goodison sceptics. For the first time in what seems like ages Everton looked a completely different side to the one the locals had seen  undressed by Arsenal, sliced open and then stuffed like a taxidermist's proudest creation. Everton were smashed to pieces by Arsenal with the most one sided 5-2 victory the Everton faithful had ever seen by the away side.

Everton had a refreshing vibrancy and lethal attacking efficiency that had almost been embarrassingly deficient from the game until the visit of West Ham. There was a liveliness and vitality about their football that some believed may have deserted them for ever. Their football had that vital spark of imagination and cohesion that simply blew West Ham aside in no time at all. There was a comfortable togetherness and unity about Everton that none of their fans had bargained on seeing again.

Then the veteran Aaron Lennon who rose to prominence at Spurs and played some of his best football, joined forces with Tom Davies, the beautifully proportioned Iceland international Gylfi Sigurdsson and the rapidly blossoming Dominic Calvert Lewin. Suddenly Everton were firing on all cylinders, the passes were fluent, foot loose and fancy free, the angles were splendidly measured and those in a blue shirt were finally discovering a new found karma. Occasionally there were howls of anguish and then Everton found a renewed poise and direction

After only 10 minutes Everton opened the scoring. The prodigal son Wayne Rooney stroked home a penalty at the second attempt after a blue tide surged into the penalty area. Joe Hart fell at the feet of Calvert Lewin and hauled down the Everton forward like the proverbial sack of potatoes. Now West Ham were scrambling for possession and balance. For next half an hour or so West Ham looked as though somebody had deliberately given them the wrong instructions. Once again the feebleness and nervousness that had almost swallowed them up against both Leicester and Watford had now taken root in their game once again. Claret and blue men went missing and the SOS signals were more or less ignored.

When Rooney swept through the defence like the most gentle of breezes to joyously steer the ball home for Everton's second, the game looked absolutely up for the visitors. Not for the first time this season, Joe Hart's cardboard cut out of a defence folded in front like a deck of cards. Hart is still one of the more reliable of goalkeepers when the mood suits him. But Hart is now shipping more goals than he could have possibly imagined at Manchester City. Everton of course were naturally in cruise control and Everton reminded you of a graceful liner floating serenely towards the sunset.

Come the second half and Everton eased back on the throttle and fell into a state of sleepy complacency. Now those grumpy voices in the Everton crowd were expressing yet more disenchantment. West Ham's excellent and continually inventive Argentine midfield play maker Manuel Lanzini had finally come out to play. He was picking up the ball in all the most crucial areas of the pitch and either running gingerly towards the Everton goal or getting up to all manner of scheming and plotting before carving open a now alarmed Everton defence.

Suddenly there was life in an otherwise lifeless West Ham defence. The bleary eyed indifference was now replaced with a much more determined and purposeful team. Claret and blue shirts were now finding each other confidently and substitute striker Diafro Sakho came on, ran strongly into the penalty area and then was carelessly bundled over for a West Ham penalty.West Ham had already seen an Aaron Cresswell shot snap a cross bar and Lanzini volunteered for the spot kick. In retrospect he may be regretting that on the spur of the moment decision. The Argentinian stepped up, clipped the ball almost too softly for words and Everton keeper Jordan Pickford must have thought all of his birthdays had come at once with an excellent save with both hands.


Everton, as if reprieved, were now revitalised by this single moment of good fortune. Half way through there occurred one of those glorious moments in a football match when something unique happens which simply distinguishes it from the run of the mill and ennobles it to a much higher plateau.

Several seasons Wayne Rooney scored a spectacular goal from the half way line for Manchester United against West Ham. Last night Rooney uncannily memorised that goal and performed the same function. Once again it was quite the most astonishing goal, a classic fusion of perception, clever thinking and brilliant intuition. West Ham keeper Joe Hart must have thought the moment of danger had passed but he hadn't accounted for the quick witted genius of Rooney at his goal-scoring best. It was quite the most incredible goal of any season and although far from the consistent goal scorer he was at Manchester United this was still a state of the art display from Rooney.

By the time Ashley Williams had added a fourth with a glancing header from yet another Everton corner West Ham were much more concerned with the coach journey home. This was another flat, disjointed and totally asymmetrical performance from the visitors. The brief signs of productive football they'd shown at home to Leicester had now vanished into the winter Mersey mist. There were flashes of co-ordinated passing across the whole length and breadth of the pitch but then it all fizzled out rather pathetically on the edge of the 18 yard area.

Pedro Obiang looked positive and energetic in the middle of West Ham's midfield and Chekyou Kouyate tried to impose himself on the game without ever really knowing what he was supposed to be doing. Kouyate does look polished on the ball but seems to going backwards rather than forwards at times. Aaron Cresswell ventured forward into promising crossing positions but it all seemed very hurried and under rehearsed. And last but not least there is a man called Marko Arnautovic. This is a man who seemingly defies description and belief.

Last season Arnautovic scored goals by the dozen and almost unstoppably at Stoke City. Now the torrent has turned into a complete drought. The Austrian forward must be longing for a hole in the ground to disappear as lolloping runs on the flank just peter out lethargically. For a man who cost West Ham £25 million this may not be the right time to write Arnautovic off as both liability or a waste of money.

It had been a long, hard and depressing night for those with a claret and blue loyalty. Yet another dreadful and meekly submissive evening for West Ham had dragged the club into those stormy waters of another relegation battle against the odds. David Moyes really did look as though he'd been waiting for a bus in some country shelter and with forthcoming games against leaders Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium followed by Chelsea and Arsenal another helter skelter of a season for West Ham could find its way into the darkest tunnel. It is indeed hard to know whether to laugh or cry at Moyes dilemma. If only he could recall those blue blooded years at Everton. Oh to be a Premier League manager.