West Ham 0 Blackburn Rovers 0

WEST HAM did little to show Benni McCarthy that he will be making a significant step up in class when he completes his move to Upton Park from Blackburn Rovers on Monday.

The Hammers were fortunate to have mustered a point for their efforts, after the visitors wasted several good chances to score during a period of sustained pressure in the second half, during which time they should have been awarded a penalty, following Mark Noble’s handball on the line to deny Gael Givet a goal.

For Gianfranco Zola’s West Ham, McCarthy’s arrival cannot come soon enough, as the home side produced a toothless display, the closest they came to breaking the deadlock being several long-range efforts.

In truth, it was a game of little quality. The first half lacked desire and spark from both sides, a testing ball to the back post that was nicked off the boot of Radoslav Kovac at the back post the closest West Ham came to scoring, and a whipped free-kick from Morten Gamst Pedersen that clattered the bar the best that Blackburn could manage.

Zola had avoided the temptation to start the returning Carlton Cole and Scott Parker, opting to leave them on the bench. But it didn’t take long for the Italian manager to give in, throwing on his leading goalscorer for the ineffective Kovac.

Frank Nouble had kept his place in the starting line-up but he was too often left isolated up front. His best moment of the game came midway through the second half, breaking into the box but, with defender Ryan Nelsen tugging at his shirt, the striker was perhaps a victim of his own honesty, as he refused to go down under the challenge and instead had to settle for a corner, when a penalty would not have been unfair.

Parker was introduced for another player who had failed to make any impact on the game, Valon Behrami.

But from that moment, Rovers started to press. Martin Olsson brought the best out of Robert Green with a thunderous left-footed shot from the edge of the box. From the resulting corner, the away side should have taken the lead, or at least had the chance to do so from 12 yards.

Christopher Samba’s header was cleared only as far as Givet, who hooked the ball towards goal from five yards. Green was beaten but Parker’s attempted clearance sliced the ball on to the arm of Noble on the line, before Cole completed the job and cleared his lines. Referee Peter Walton appeared to be unsighted by a mass of bodies in his line of vision, but the assistant also missed the incident, leaving Blackburn boss Sam Allardyce to rue the decision.

Then, just two minutes later, came the best chance of the game. A long ball over the top saw substitute Jason Roberts one-on-one with rookie centre-half James Tomkins. The Blackburn forward first shrugged the youngster off, before dropping a shoulder to leave him bamboozled but his shot was well saved by Green.

West Ham rallied and has successive shots from Alessandro Diamanti, substitute Freddie Sears and Jack Collison were either blocked or saved by Paul Robinson.

With just six minutes left on the clock, Parker did brilliantly to work his way to the byline and stabbed the ball across the face of goal, but there was nobody on the end of it.

It was perhaps a fitting end that characterised the match from the hosts’ point of view. However, the point does move them up into 15th place, giving them further breathing space from the dreaded drop zone.