Well, that just sucked. What seemed to be turning out to be a fine afternoon just went all to shit as we switched off and let a team languishing at the bottom of the table claw back and steal a point. Two points dropped.

I really thought at the beginning of the season we had learned how to kill teams off when we were ahead. Somehow, we forgot that lesson today. This seemed very much like one of the matches from last season where we started with a lead and let it slip right out of our grasp. Ah, I’m too pissed to even write about. The good news, is that the right things happened around the league so that we’ve now moved up to third place, still with a game in hand.

Update: I couldn’t put my finger on just what it was that frustrated me so much about this match, but I think Mark Vallis over at The Online Gooner has hit the nail on the head for me, when he said:

“Tactics. It was quite obvious after the first half, that the young lad who was playing alongside Upson at the back for West Ham was completely out of his depth. Why on earth wasn’t he totally and utterly punished? We’re simply not ruthless enough. I’d have got Bendtner on as soon as possible and told him to go and stand next to him and make the boy mark him. Other teams ruthlessly exploit our weaknesses, why don’t we do the same? If we’re not prepared to win at all costs, it probably means we aren’t going to win at all.”

Well put, Mark. Read the rest of his article here. If you’re not subscribed to the Online Gooner feed like I am, you probably should be. It’s consistently excellent.