Walcott rescues Gunners

West Ham 1 Arsenal 3

A goal by Carlton Cole early in the second half at Upton Park threatened to give West Ham only their second league win in 11 games but a shot from Walcott somehow trundled through the goalkeeper’s hands before further goals by the winger and Podolski won the game.

The victory breathes new life into what had been Arsenal’s faltering bid for the Premier League title and sends them to Newcastle on Sunday in better heart than seemed likely after the 47th minute here.

“I am proud of the character of this team because they are always focused and try to do well,” Wenger said. “They respond.”

In fact, Arsenal dominated most of the match and could have won handsomely if they had taken a reasonable percentage of their chances.

“We couldn’t take our chances in the first half and we responded very well in second half, in the end winning the game in a convincing way,” Wenger said.

“The positive is we created chances. The negative is we didn’t take them. Sometimes there is a guilt flying around the team when you don’t take your chances. You think, basically, we deserve to be punished and we were.”

Sam Allardyce, the West Ham manager, bemoaned a missed chance to build his team’s morale and grab three unexpected points in advance of tomorrow’s vital home match against West Brom.

“We had a great opportunity to win against a top-of-the-league team and unfortunately we didn’t take it because we didn’t get the second goal,” he said.

“We paid the price today, sadly. It is about performing like that against those clubs which give you a better chance to win the game. When we’ve had that opportunity recently, we haven’t done that, except against Fulham here [a 3-0 victory].

“West Brom is becoming a must-win. Catch up is getting a little wider and wider each game when you don’t pick up points, but we have to take a lot of positives out of the way we played today and make sure we play as we did today and like we did at Tottenham in the Capital One Cup, against West Brom.”

West Ham opened the game well but Arsenal began to control the game and make — and miss — a series of openings. Olivier Giroud was the guiltiest man in the Arsenal team, failing to convert a series of crosses from both wings in the first half, while Adrian saved well from Santi Cazorla’s header and both Walcott and Mikel Arteta volleyed wide.

But a minute into the second half, Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny could not hold Kevin Nolan’s low shot and Carlton Cole poked the rebound home. Things could have got much worse for Arsenal as Matt Jarvis forced a better save from Szczesny, Joey O’Brien stole in to head wide when unmarked, and Carlton Cole could not reach a cross from the left.

But after 68 minutes, Adrian, who had just produced a fine double save from Cazorla and Mezut Ozil, let Walcott’s shot slip between his fingers.

Three minutes later Podolski, on for the injured Aaron Ramsey, crossed for Walcott to head home, then blasted number three past Adrian.

“Podolski has been out for four months, he has not played one game,” Wenger said. “I try to get him slowly back to competitiveness and he has shown that he can have a huge impact because he can score and make you score goals, give assists. We had two wingers from that moment on [the 66th minute] and it made a huge difference because we had a good width in our game and that created many problems for West Ham.”

Ramsey, though, could be out for up to a month. “It looks like a thigh strain,” Wenger said. “For me, a thigh strain — I don’t know how serious the thigh strain is — but the Christmas period is certainly over for him.”

WEST HAM UNITED (4-5-1): Adrian 5; O’Brien 5 (Demel 65, 6), Tomkins 6, Collins 6 (Rat 38, 6), McCartney 6; J Cole 5, Diame 6, Noble 7, Nolan 6 (Taylor 75), Jarvis 6; C Cole.7.

ARSENAL (4-2-3-1) Szczesny 6; Sagna 6, Mertesacker 7, Vermaelen 6, Gibbs 8; Ramsey 6 (Podolski 66, 7), Arteta 7; Walcott 8, Ozil 7 (Flamini 81), Cazorla 7; Giroud 5 (Bendtner 84).

Referee: Phil Dowd.