Sam Allardyce sloped along the Upton Park touchline like an ancient Brontosaurus chewing lethargically on an uprooted bush, whilst Roberto Mancini, hair, scarf and coat fixed deliciously in place, stood motionless, a laconic smile playing across his olive skin. It is a scene from the English Premier league 2012-2013 season, a place where dinosaurs roam, but where the clock is ticking for these ancient beasts of another era. In the steaming pantanal swamp that is Poplar and the East End, a match lacking only goals pitched these two curious animals in direct combat on Saturday evening.

It was a sumptuous contrast: the bash and thud of West Ham's Nolan, Carroll and Collins against the refined slide rule passing of Nasri, Clichy and Tevez. With bubbles cascading across the players' tunnel at the start and Blue Moon thrashing out of the away end, the fine old bastion of Upton Park sat proud under the lights and welcomed in the players who would provide a feast of football for our eager eyes.

The big old beast that is Allardyce, once a colossus in the back four of Bolton Wanderers in the 70s, a mustachioed throwback to the days when shirts were tucked into shorts so that nothing would get in the way of a cut-you-off-at-the-waist tackle, might be a strange fit for the School of Ballet that once produced the likes of Malcolm Allison, John Bond, Bobby Moore, Martin Peters, Trevor Brooking, Alan Devonshire and any number of football's aesthetes. But he has got West Ham playing to the strengths of the collective unit: lungs, willpower and coordination.

His famous quote that he could have "won a couple of Champions Leagues with Real Madrid" has left Allardyce open to ridicule, but even the sophisticated Mancini is finding that particular competition a tough nut to crack. Big Sam famously rued not being called Allardici but it was the Italian who had opted to play the role of Bobby Manc, settling here for the more Anglo-Saxon remedies of a packet of fruit pastels, which he handed out generously to his chums Brian Kidd and David Platt. With chewing comes inspiration, as Garibaldi surely once said.

Whilst the bench chewed, City pushed, cajoling in the mode they had at The Hawthorns and Craven Cottage, settling into a pleasant rhythmic stride, full of verve and intent. Here were the first signs that the form of last year might just be on the verge of making a reappearance. For all those settling into complaint mode at the end of this fascinating game, hold your breath a moment. The lethal predator of last season is stirring. There were positive signs aplenty if you were prepared to seek them out: Hart as solid as ever; Kompany playing his first water-tight game of the season; Clichy fast, direct, confident. Here is a player so different from the strange beast we saw at Arsenal running away from strikers and making pretty diamond shaped holes in the Emirates defence by sitting wide, or deep or lost, that it fair makes your eyes water.

Oddly, having praised Kompany, Clichy and Hart, there remain two other members of the defence who played even better: Kolo Touré on the right was athletic and forceful, allowing none of the trademark slips and slides of yore to creep into his defensive play. Fifteen metres across to his left stood a young man, who did not put a foot wrong all night. His calm passing, unhurried clearing, safe heading and strong-arm marshalling of West Ham's forward line reminded onlookers of a young Franco Baresi, here within earshot of the Bowbells, where the thud and slash of Billy Bonds was once king. Take a bow young Nastasic, your performance was both epic and faultless. May you have many more like this in the heart of the City back four, five, three.

Mancini, suddenly plagued by the growing Barcelona clan behind the scenes at the Etihad and the stories leaked this week of fancy dinners in Monte Carlo and "six or seven" other European cities, looks like a man coming close to the nitty gritty part of the season already. If his miracle appears and the Blues make progress against Ajax and Real in the Champions League, if the form shown here in patches of sophisticated dominance can start to be channelled into the goal-scoring splendour of last Autumn, all is far from lost. But, make no mistake, strange shaped clouds are building over the Italian, matching the strange shaped quotes slipping from his lips.

On the pitch, meanwhile, despite the continued absence of the Little Conductor Silva, City's passing is beginning to come together. Yaya, a man built like the lighthouse at the entrance to Port Boué, is once again turning on a sixpence. Barry, a man with the engine of a Mini Cooper, bats to and fro. Nasri, in and out of little corridors on the right, is linking well with the indefatigable figure of the apaché Tevez and the willing runners of Balloteli and Dzeko.

That no goals came on this occasion should not herald more gnashing of teeth. Those intricate patterns, the slide rule passes, the link-up play, the incessant punishing possession that we thought was extinct, lives on.

 

• Recommend0
• Tweet0
• Email