Hammers and Manchester United share the points in tedious goal-less draw.

Hammers and Manchester United share the points in tedious goal- less draw.

There were, believe it or not, three noteworthy incidents during last night's tedious goal- less draw between West Ham United and Manchester United at the London Stadium. The first was that perhaps unseen moment when Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho seemed to be jotting down some notes for his next compulsively readable best selling novel or maybe he was eagerly summarising the bland, pointless fare he'd just experienced. It was never like this at Chelsea or so he must have thought at the time.

The second outstanding moment came right at the end of this match. With the match fizzling out into what seemed a pre-arranged goal-less draw, Mark Noble, West Ham's tirelessly dedicated captain, came face to face with Manchester United's midfield enforcer Paul Pogba. The two men proceeded to stare at each other menacingly before shoulders were engaged, fists were threatened but never connected at any point and the meeting of handbags dissolved into some rather childish playground brawl. Suffice it to say it was all unnecessary and unseemly and everybody shook hands at the end of it all. It was, after all. a meaninglessly irrelevant game and these things happen from time to time.

At the London Stadium last night in West Ham's penultimate end of season match at their two year old ground this was one of those weary looking, end of season games before the Premier League takes itself on a welcome summer break. West Ham scrapped and slugged their way through a match against a team whose local neighbours are already enjoying their first morning by some far off pool or beach. Manchester United earned the point that they were looking for in ensuring finishing second to Manchester City. But it all seemed flat, dreary and colourless.

For West Ham of course this has been another torturous, traumatic, tension filled season where everything that might have gone wrong did go wrong and eventually righted itself in the final weeks of the Premier League season. For those of us who are almost immune to these yearly trials and tribulations perhaps this shouldn't have come as any great surprise. Besides, following West Ham has always been hard work for their lifetime season ticket holders and none should ever exclaim shock at any point.

 West Ham, or so it would seem, thrive on subjecting their supporters to unsavoury relegation battles. The last season at Upton Park almost has the feel of a wartime movie epic where the leading protagonists give award winning performances. And yet this was not the kind of pain and suffering where somebody gets seriously hurt and we all leave the cinema with tears in our eyes. This was West Ham being West Ham, humiliatingly bad at one moment then irrepressibly stunning in the next.

After losing their first three games away from home to Manchester United, Newcastle United and Southampton, West Ham took that now customary roller coaster journey through the season where home form deserted them and away form simply got worse. Admittedly, their first home game against Huddersfield did result in a workmanlike 2-0 victory at the London Stadium but you'd have been hard pressed to figure out what exactly was going on in their ensuing games because very few of the Hammers faithful could ever have come up with an adequate explanation.

Suffice it to say that West Ham face their last Premier League season against Everton in the safe waters of the bottom half of the table but still afloat and without the need of a life raft. Here they will face their old boss Sam Allardyce now at Everton and if the West Ham supporters at the London Stadium feel the need to vent their feelings again then maybe this is the right time. According to the patrons of a claret and blue persuasion Allardyce was the worst thing to happen to them since their last relegation from the top flight.

When Allardyce was at West Ham the football served up was all grime, grit and a minor throwback to the Industrial Revolution where the miners rolled up their sleeves and the pits and collieries were a vision of sweat, hard graft and devotion to duty. Allardyce believed in the hard wired practicalities and harsh realities rather than the ornate decorations advocated by his fellow Premier League colleagues.

Now after the all too brief and moderately successful Slaven Bilic had taken West Ham from their spiritual home at Upton Park and into their first at the new London Stadium, a rough, dodgy spell became intolerable. Bilic fell foul of the boo boys at West Ham and was sacked just as he thought he'd got his feet firmly under the table in the East End. Class may be permanent but football management can often be like a high wire trapeze act in the circus, a short term flirtation rather than something more concrete.

Then shortly before Christmas David Moyes came in from the cold after that frightful spell at Manchester United and last night Moyes must have thought he was looking at a mirror. After several 4-1 hammerings by Swansea, Liverpool and Manchester City, West Ham must have thought the quicksand was beginning to swallow them up too quickly. Then following another 4-1 subsidence at Arsenal, and a 1-1 draw at Chelsea, the crucial face saving 2-0 victory at Leicester City kept West Ham on the credit side.

Perhaps though the one defining moment of West Ham's season came at home to Burnley when all the frustrations and uncertainties of the season simply boiled over. That day West Ham were simply trounced 3-0  by Burnley at home and all the bitterness and vile vitriol came spilling over the barricades. Fans raced onto the pitch with corner flags and a couple of the more hardened West Ham fans had to be carried forcefully from the pitch, banners screaming their unhappiness at the way they felt they were being treated.

Still, in one of the last but one home matches of the season, both West Ham captain Mark Noble, the tall and upstanding Cheikhyou Kouyate, the splendidly mischievous and scheming Manuel Lanzini and the effortless assurance of Joao Mario, on loan from Inter Milan, all conspired to give perhaps one last show of unity and togetherness.

From the point of view of  the neutral it could be that come next season the aforesaid cast members of this production could be wearing different shirts. Kouyate has been an excellent investment but it does seem that his sell by date may well have expired. Too often Kouyate looks as if his legs have been caught up in some inextricable tangle. He seems to pirouette on one foot, adjusting the other before finally loping forward with those long legs with subtly placed passes and the occasional winning goal from either a free kick and an important goal scoring header from a probing cross.

Joao Mario may not be quite the definitive answer to West Ham's midfield problems, calmness personified perhaps but not the effective and clinical midfield link the club are looking for. His comfort on the ball is most encouraging but goal scoring excellence may not be his forte although he has scored a number of vital goals for West Ham recently.

Manuel Lanzini is undoubtedly one of the most loveliest touch players at the club and continues to provide West Ham with variations on a theme, darting, cutting inside opponents and then carving out inviting pathways into an advanced attacking position. Lanzini could be called a footballing bohemian, full of the arts and crafts that are regarded as essential to the role of the modern midfield playmaker. But as Lanzini trudged off the London Stadium last night there was a sense that he's probably given as much to West Ham as could be expected and another challenge lies on the horizon.

And then right at the end of this distinctly underwhelming a gentleman by the name of Andy Carroll came on as a substitute for West Ham. Under the circumstances it seemed a mysterious act given that both West Ham and United seemed to have signed a written agreement before the game that it should finish goal-less. But the pony tailed striker came traipsing onto the pitch with an ironic smile on his face trying desperately to alter what was now a predictable outcome. But the six foot beanpole from Newcastle looked a sorry sight perhaps wondering what would happen if a referee ever gave him the benefit of the doubt.

With the likes of Jessie Lingard, Paul Pogba, Antonio Valencia, Phil Jones and the rest of Manchester United strutting boulevardiers opening up increasingly larger gaps in the West Ham defence it did look for a while that the visitors could have potentially stripped West Ham bare with a hatful of goals but then erred on the side of caution. Their frequent attacks were built from the richest clay and mortar, passes sweeping across the London Stadium pitch with embarrassing regularity.

Sadly though both sides left the pitch unscathed with different thoughts on their mind. West Ham, you suspect, will just be glad to be in the Premier League regardless of results and recent form and Manchester United will now finish as runners up to their neighbours City but with a yawning gap that might take some time to fill. Football supporters of every town, city, village, road and street will now turn their attentions to a World Cup in Russia. The wheels will keep spinning and Jose Mourinho will hope that justice is seen to be done. We can never be sure but one day it could happen. We must hope Jose.