In the end the score reflected the play, but somehow West Ham managed to keep the result less than certain till the last 5 minutes.

It was all too easy to start with, with West Ham's England midfield completely overwhelmed by Arsenal's passing game. Michael Carrick was absent, rested for the Charlton game in midweek apparently, but Cole, Sinclair, and Bowyer all played and of these only Cole looked anything like an international player, and that only in parts.

Pires created the first with his run into the box from the right. Lomas pulled him over as he shaped to shoot and the ref awarded a penalty before sending the West Ham man off. By the letter of the law I guess it was a red card offence. There was definitely contact, it was definitely a foul, and Bobby was definitely in a goal-scoring situation. But I had some sympathy for Lomas as the contact was not aggressive or even strong, and Pires didn't appear to try very hard to stay on his feet. I'll lave off saying any more till I've seen the replays! Anyway, Henry whacked the spot kick past David James for 1-0, and it seemed like it'd be the start of a rout.

But we know this Arsenal team better than that. With little resistance being offered further out than the D, they started taking it a bit easy, treating it a bit like a training match. It was good to watch, but as so often happens we ended up with no further goals to show for our extreme domination.

Credit also has to go to David James in the Irons' goal for some superb saves, throughout the game. Overall he's not in the same class as Seaman (or others) but when it comes to basic shot-stopping he's not half bad. I guess he's getting plenty of practice at West Ham, and certainly did in this game.

With 10 men, West Ham never looked much like scoring. But the opposition will score with just one player on the pitch if you set it up for them. And on 40 minutes Edu's awful pass-back from the left wing was gleefully picked up by Defoe, and slotted past the outrushing Seaman. Oops.

The visitors did pretty well defensively in the second half, and for most of it you wouldn't have known they were down to 10 men. Ok, so they didn't get forward much apart from one time Sinclair found himself unmarked on the edge of the box, in space created by Defoe pulling Lauren forward. Defore's pass back found Sinclair but he snatched at his shot and put it high and wide.

Arsenal started with Parlour on the bench. Gio van Bronckhorst was deputising for Ashley Cole at left-back, so Edu partnered Gilberto in the centre of midfield with Pires and Wiltord on the wings. With 20 minutes to go Parlour replaced Edu and that gave us a bit more oomph. Parlour was obviously keen to make his presence felt on his return from injury, and with his all-over-the-pitch attitude it becasme like 12 against 10.

Bergkamp created the second with a great cross from the left wing. West Ham appeared to stop playing momentarily, thinking that Dennis had fouled Bowyer. Much moaning followed from Bowyer and Cole in particular. But the ref wasn't interested. Perhaps by this point he'd noticed that Bowyer was throwing himself to the ground pretty regularly (working on his new "victim" image"). On the jumbotron replays it looked like Bergkamp did catch him with his arm, but it didn't look like he'd seen the former thug approaching from behind. If anything, Bowyer ran into Bergkamp as the Dutchman turned away from another player on his other side, who was in his zone of vision and distracting his attention.

Anyway, the cross to the far post was perfect, and the marking was non-existent, so all Henry had to do was make contact with his head to put Arsenal ahead again. He does seem to be scoring more with his head.... but this was pretty straightforward stuff. Bergkamp's goal in all but name.

With West Ham getting a little more adventurous, the space appeared for Arsenal to expolit on the break. And with 5 minutes to go the ball was played forward from the left wing for Pires, who slid it across to the right for Henry to run onto. James nearly made it there ahead of him, but not quite, and Henry fired it past the keeper before vaulting over him to avoid the collision.

Nice to see that David Seaman hasn't lost his sense of humour. When the West Ham fans sang something about his having a (bad? bag?) lady's haircut, he stuck 2 fingers up at them, turning it into a "pair of scissors" mime. They responded by striking up the now standard "lets all do the Seaman" chant, accompanied by the traditional "flapping" mime. He smiled at them, shook his head, and did his own "lifting a trophy" mime. Good stuff. And when we chipped in with "he's won the championship" he shook his head at us and raised three fingers, in case anyone was suggesting he'd only won it once.

The visiting fans gave Keown a hard time too, and his antics in front of them when we went ahead for the secodn time were reminiscent of the Nutty Boy himself. Nigel got a great reception, of course, and it was nice of Roeder to bring him off towards the end so he could get a standing ovation from the whole stadium (I don't suppose that Roeder brought him off because he thought that Scott Minto was going to offer any greater resistance).

So we're 5 points clear again. Just as well, because 2 of the next 3 games are away at Liverpool and Newcastle. It's not impossible that we'll drop points in one of those games (Liverpool actually won a game yesterday). But first there's the FA Cup game against Farnborough, which will presumably mean a rest for some of the regulars.