Match report: Pluck those feathers

There might not have been much Premiership action this weekend – but there was plenty of f**kwittery. The points have been awarded, the match reports are in - and here's a taster of the action:

The seven ages of West Ham (Blackburn 1 West Ham 1)
A missed punch. An air shot from three feet out. A ball trickling over the goal-line courtesy of Ryan Nelsen’s knee. Heaven help us, but those were the highlights. Given the choice between counting reindeer droppings, plucking a live turkey, inserting a Yuletide log up our jacksie or watching a repeat of this turgid affair, we’ll take any of the first three.

In fact, we’ll take all of them.

This was one of only two matches played over the snow-bound weekend, and to all those ground staff who heroically laboured to make the pitch playable, it was one more reminder of the utter futility of life. You’re born, you pee yourself, you go to school, you work, you watch West Ham away, you marry, you divorce, you start peeing yourself again, you pop your clogs. Why? I mean – why?

In fact, the most interesting aspect of this game came before the referee had even blown his whistle, when Valon Behrami racked up five points on the F**kwit Index by injuring himself during the warm-up. We should all have gone down the pub there and then.

To be fair to both sides, while the game might have been short on entertainment it did generate its fair share of f**kwit points, with West Ham’s Frederic Piquionne the star of the show. He picked up his first point in the 14^th minute when he was clean through and put the ball skywards; got another half an hour later when he was one-on-one, aimed for the near post and missed; put a free header over the bar in the 74^th minute; and shot well wide from a difficult angle in the 89^th. Not surprisingly, he also picked up three for the most disappointing player, a remarkable effort amid so much competition.

But the real entertainment came with the pantomime inside the West Ham six-yard box on 50 minutes.

First, West Ham’s debutant keeper Ruud Boffin came out to punch a Morten Gamst Pedersen corner and struck nothing but air. Pablo Barrera tried to dribble out of danger and promptly lost possession. The ball was despatched back into the box, bounced off West Ham’s Tal Ben-Haim and made its way to Blackburn’s Benjani, who swung a leg and completely missed from approximately three feet out. Teammate Ryan Nelsen did slightly better – in as much as he made contact with the ball – and while his initial shot was saved by Boffin it rebounded out, bounced off Nelsen’s knee and squirmed into the net.

World class it was not. But Boffin, Barrera and Ben-Haim each get a point for the assist, while Benjani gets two for his miss.

Blackburn picked up their own assists in West Ham’s equaliser when Scott Parker dribbled past Pedersen, Nelsen and Grant Hanley, before Blackburn’s Gael Givet intercepted his mazy run by kicking the ball straight to Junior Stanislas, who scored.

Elsewhere, West Ham’s Carlton Cole got on the score sheet when the ball bounced off his foot and went wide; Backburn’s David Dunn got another point in the 80^th minute when he found Row Z with a truly dire strike; and the Hammers’ Benni McCarthy picked up a third for missing both the ball and the goal in the dying seconds.

And when we say dying, we mean just that – and not a moment too soon.
By Keith Rodgers