Grant’s protests can’t hide harsh truth

FARCE was the order of the day at St Andrew’s.

The groundsman setting off the sprinklers during the game was a farce.

Referee Michael Oliver not giving West Ham a late penalty was a farce, according to Avram Grant.

However the manner in which West Ham United lost their grip on the rope which they have to climb to reach Premier League safety was the biggest farce of all.

Grant can grunt all he likes about mistakes by officials, but his gripes pale into insignificance when measured against his team’s rice-paper resistance from such a position of superiority.

Never mind wanting to throttle Oliver, his team must complete a kill when they have their hands so firmly around opponents’ necks. Such failings are the hallmarks of a side doomed to relegation.

Replays point to the fact Lars Jacobsen should have had a penalty for Jean Beausejour’s ridiculous decision to pull the Swede back late in the game, but it is hard to have too much sympathy when such an incidence should have been rendered an irrelevance after Frederic Piquionne and Valon Behrami had put West Ham in sight of their first away win since August last year.

“Of course it was a penalty yes. I have seen it on TV. It is the kind of bad luck you have when you are down there. I thought the linesman could have seen it, but he said he couldn’t. That’s football,” said Jacobsen.

Picking the positives from the rubble is essential as Grant tries to prepare his side for the visit of West Brom on Wednesday evening, but this will feel like a defeat for the side glued to the bottom of the Premier League. No wonder owner David Sullivan confesses to waking up “10 times” a night in a cold sweat. This was no cure for his insomnia.

The negatives far outweigh the positives and Jacobsen knows there are crucial failings which have to be addressed quickly if the “false” position West Ham believe they are in is to change.

“When you are 2-0 ahead in the second half you expect to win. We threw it away,’’ Jacobsen admitted. “Maybe we lack a killer instinct. You could sense when they scored the first goal, a little bit of insecurity started to creep in.”

Birmingham are just the kind of aggressive side to pounce on such frailty. Alex McLeish was a relieved man to be able to send his owner Carson Yeung to the boardroom without having to face gloating former owner Sullivan, but it took the Scot almost 60 minutes to work out that it is when Birmingham do what they did best last season they remain most effective.

So far there seems little sight of a solution to the conundrum of where to operate Alexander Hleb, the midfielder on loan from Barcelona.

He was deployed in the hole behind Nikola Zigic and Cameron Jerome, but was so anonymous he looked as if he had fallen down it.

There is a temptation to upgrade at Premier League clubs and play the beautiful game, once a foothold is established in the division.

Such aspirations are admirable, but it was only when Birmingham resorted to their more abrasive, direct style and withdrew the Belarus international that they looked threatening.

“We can’t forget where we came from, but we certainly need more than we got out of the strikers in the first half,” said McLeish. I’m aware that when we’ve got a player like Hleb in the team, we’ve got to try to play to his strengths. We try and get the right link for him, bringing a player of his quality into the squad. Sometimes you try to reinvent the wheel.”

It was only when the wheels and Hleb came off that two set-pieces from Sebastian Larsson brought goals for Jerome and Liam Ridgewell before all the moaning started from Grant about referee Oliver.

He insists he will not be his usual polite self when it comes to discussing officials in future. Maybe he should practice his anger on his players for the next few days.