Fortress Upton Park As 'Arry Tips West Ham For Mid Table

One defeat at home in 2012 and, as 'Arry says, with Nolan feeding off of Carroll and good wide men getting in crosses, we will score goals. With Old Bag Puss ducking a Lineker invitation to criticise Allardyce's tactics on MOTD, it was good to hear his opinion that we will have a good season and finish mid table.

The highlights confirmed what I thought when watching the game live, we were in a different class to Sunderland and, on another day, would have breezed to victory. The fact we didn't was down to bad luck, unconvincing finishing from Cole and Vaz Te, poor play by Collins - it was another shocking error when he gave away the ball and poor marking subsequently - and better goalkeeping from Mignolet than from Jussi: the Black Cats' keepers save was out of the top drawer, whilst Jussi got a hand to Fletcher's goal but failed to deflect it wide.

Some may bang on about long ball, but we are using the full width of the pitch rather than hitting it long down the middle, and I have no problems with that. The game was never boring and Sunderland contributed nothing much to it, which suggests we were pretty pleasing on the eye. The decision to relegate us to the last game on MOTD seemed unfair.

Anyway, the dropped points apart, there were far more positives than negatives from yesterday as even Redknapp had to admit!