29th December, 2007

KB: KUMB; HM Hammers Mad; ST Sunday Times; SE Sunday Express; SM Sunday Mirror; OB Observer;
DM Daily Mirror; GU Guardian; TM Times; HD Hammers Diary; SK Sky; DE Daily Express

JS John Simkin GL Gary Loughran HM Hammer Man RD Ren Dog HD Hammer Divone
MC Mr Chewy UC UK Chris RO Rocketron GA Gav SM Simon LE Lee CB Chrissieboy

Sky Sports: Ronaldo was presented with the chance to make it 2-0 midway through the second half, but he drilled his penalty wide after Jonathan Spector was penalised for handball. Yet West Ham had been the better side for large swathes of the game and drew level on 77 minutes when substitute Anton Ferdinand headed home Mark Noble's corner. Noble was the creator for his side's winning goal on 82 minutes, curling in a free-kick from the right which Matthew Upson rose well to meet for his first goal for the club.

BBC Sport: Cristiano Ronaldo's missed penalty for Manchester United proved crucial at West Ham as the Premier League champions were beaten at Upton Park. United got an early let-off when Hayden Mullins hit the woodwork and Mark Noble blazed high from the rebound. Ronaldo quickly made the Hammers pay when he headed in a Ryan Giggs cross. But Ronaldo missed a penalty and that inspired West Ham into a late rally, which saw Anton Ferdinand and Matthew Upson each head in for the win.

Sunday Times: West Ham, who played with five in midfield and the excellent Carlton Cole as a lone striker, played the neater and more industrious football. Cole has been a revelation this season, his confidence boosted by a prolonged run in the side, his strength a constant threat to Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic at the centre of an unusually hesitant United defence. With Darren Fletcher and Owen Hargreaves in central midfield and Ryan Giggs in one of his showboating moods, United lacked creativity in midfield. A double miss, initially by Hayden Mullins, whose shot from an acute angle cracked the crossbar, and then by Mark Noble, who lofted the follow-up over the bar, punctured the buoyancy of the home fans. An innocuous foul by Giggs on John Pantsil, a right-back drafted in to the right of midfield in the second half, produced two further corners for West Ham, from the second of which Anton Ferdinand rose to head home. A draw would have been welcome enough, but five minutes later, from another set piece, a free kick also earned by Pantsil, Matthew Upson thumped another header past Tomasz Kuszczak for the winner. (Andrew Longmore, 30th December, 2007)

Sunday Mirror: Sir Alex Ferguson damned West Ham with faint praise in his post-match assessment. "They were competitive and aggressive and always about us," he said. "But it is their biggest game of the season, I suppose." If that is true then West Ham have done rather well on the grand stage in the last year. Three times they have played Manchester United and three times they have won. For West Ham manager Alan Curbishley it compensates for the years he suffered at United's hands while he was in charge at Charlton. "I had 15 years without a result against them," said Curbishley, who had nothing but praise for the tenacity and sheer endeavour of his players who had scuttled United's hopes of a victory that seemed assured after Ronaldo scored in the 14th minute... West Ham appeared set to pay the price for a glaring miss by the magnificent Mark Noble who blazed the rebound over an open goal after Hayden Mullins had hit the post after just eight minutes. But Noble made amends with a personal performance that epitomised the West Ham spirit.... West Ham were given new belief and Noble provided the ammunition that brought the equaliser and the winner. In the 77th minute, his corner was headed home by Anton Ferdinand who for once was able to grab the right sort of headlines. Then eight minutes from time, Noble's free-kick was floated into the United area. Matthew Upson was first to the ball to head past Kuszczak. "No complaints, the best team won," said Sir Alex. And he was right. (Steve Stammers, 30th December, 2007)

Hammers Mad: No-one has beaten Robert Green from the spot this season but, having already made a hat-trick of stops, the once-capped England keeper kept his gloves clean this time as Ronaldo inexplicably drilled the consequent penalty beyond the base of his right-hand post. This time it was the Hammers who made United pay for their costly miss and they levelled on 77 minutes when substitute Ferdinand rose highest in the six-yard box to meet Noble's corner with a powerful header that ripped into the net. An ecstatic East End was still coming to terms with that equaliser when Noble engineered the 82nd minute winner with a well-flighted free-kick that Upson nodded beyond the diving Kuszczak and under his right-hand angle.

KUMB: 4-5-1 at home and I was not too impressed. What did we have to fear from this lot? Why isolate Carlton? But the tactical nous of our manager began to show straight away as a magnificent midfield set about their task of getting in Manc faces. 7 minutes in and we saw the double miss of the season after Cole laid off a peach of a ball to Mullins in the box. He lifted it over their keeper but it struck the bar. Waiting for the scraps was the returning Mark Noble who inexplicably put it over with the goal at his mercy. It was one of those “I hope we don’t live to regret that later” moments. We were running the show, but pure quality from the Mancs saw us behind on 13 minutes after an exquisite pass from Saha sent Giggs on his way. His cross was inch perfect from the left and Ronaldo left the foundering McCartney in his wake as he headed past Green. Against the run of play, but the game is about clinically dispatching chances and that’s what they did.... And then on 35 minutes, he was at it again. The magnificent Carlton Cole – what a revelation this guy has been - made a telling tackle on Tevez and off went Solano. Weaving through the middle, he showed sublime awareness as he unleashed a shot which the keeper only just managed to tip over. The corner that followed created chaos, but we were lacking the killer touch in the box. What we lacked in the final third was compensated for by the sheer tenacity in the middle third. I lost count of how many times we kept winning back the ball when it went loose. 50/50 balls had our name written all over them. Never say die was the order of the day and we followed that to the letter. Noble was having a quiet half in comparison with the midfield dynamo of Solano, Parker and Mullins, but he found space on the edge of the box with four minutes left and chipped a great ball forward to find the unmarked Cole but he completely misdirected his header, the one error in a fantastic performance by the striker. (East End Martin, 30th December, 2007)

Daily Telegraph: Who needs Carlos Tevez? It's as though the sight of their returning hero yesterday was all the Hammers needed to rekindle some of that Argentine fire from last season when they did the double over United. The two goals in the last 13 minutes with which they won the match - both headers from set-pieces by Anton Ferdinand and Matthew Upson - may not have been in the Cristiano Ronaldo class, but they were too good for a United side who were well below their best and without Wayne Rooney, not that that should be seen as an excuse... On his way to the press conference, Alan Curbishley said he had had to pass "a wall and a half" of photographs of absent players and he wasn't talking about the likes of Hurst, Peters and Moore. "It's a fantastic result," he said. "I had 16 players today, I've now got 14, I think, and every time someone pops up and does a job." Nolberto Solano and Scott Parker both had to come off and are struggling to be fit to play Arsenal on Tuesday. West Ham's lack of creativity is seen by some as the reason for their poor home form - away from home the responsibility is more on the opposition to do the unlocking - but there was nothing wrong with their invention yesterday. Their finishing, maybe. If there was any justice in the Premier League they would have had a couple of goals as well as a penalty in the first half. (Clive White, 31st December, 2007)

Daily Mirror: Cristiano Ronaldo, who missed the penalty that would have put the game out of reach, stormed down the tunnel, shrugging off George McCartney, who wanted to swap shirts. Rio Ferdinand wasn't far behind him. He kicked out at a drinks bottle as he crossed the touchline and booted it so hard it made Anderson flinch and wheel round when it hit him on the back of the leg. Oh, they felt the pain of the defeat to West Ham this time all right. Because this time, it cost them a crucial advantage over Arsenal. This time, it produced a momentum swing in the race for the title when no one was expecting it. This weekend was the moment when everyone expected United to stretch their legs at the top of the table and begin to pull away from the Gunners. Instead, after Arsenal's emphatic win at Everton, United are behind going into the New Year. Suddenly, they're on the back foot. They should have cruised to victory over a West Ham team decimated by injuries and handicapped by appalling home form. (Oliver Holt, 31st December, 2007)

The Times: Rarely have United been so tormented and looked so lifeless. West Ham’s five-man midfield was so effective that Ferguson was forced to reshape his formation midway through the first half. The rangy Carlton Cole gave Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, pillars of the meanest defence in the Premiership, more trouble than they could handle, while Carlos Tévez could deliver no hammer blows on his emotional homecoming after his exploits for West Ham last season.... The introduction of John Pantsil, because of two more injuries suffered by West Ham players, injected pace and sparked a period of ascendancy that brought the goals. Anton Ferdinand, returning from a hamstring injury and a court case in which he was found not guilty of assault, climbed above Darren Fletcher and Wes Brown to head home a corner and Matthew Upson contorted his body to head in a free kick five minutes later. “Everyone makes mistakes, but if you don’t learn from them you’re a fool,” Ferdinand said. “Rio [his brother, who plays for United] helped me to get through it as he’s been through things in his life.” (Gary Jacob, 31st December, 2007)

The Guardian: The shock lay in the predatory fashion in which West Ham capitalised. After all, Curbishley's side are not equipped for swashbuckling play at the moment. The manager talks often of injuries. There is a corridor in the ground lined with pictures of the current squad, but scans, x-rays and medical reports swim in front of Curbishley's eyes when he tries to peer at those faces. Scott Parker jarred his knee at the weekend and Nolberto Solano and Fredrik Ljungberg both tweaked their hamstrings. Authorities on Upton Park ailments suggest that the injury list runs - or limps - to 14 names. Even so, Saturday's outcome, delivering a third consecutive win over United, must have made the Hammers feel they could caper through any number of handicaps. Considering that they now go to the Emirates tomorrow they had better hold tight to that sense of ebullience. On Saturday the crowd was ecstatic by the close, moving Curbishley to explain to Julien Faubert, the Frenchman still to make his debut because of ankle and foot problems, that "this is the West Ham noise". At a stadium where the club had not won since October 21 the midfielder may have been under the impression that the characteristic sound was of heavy sighing. (Kevin McCarra, 31st December, 2007)

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