THE referee reduced half time to 10 minutes to beat the freeze he would have done well to reduce the match to that too. The pitch played well the teams played rubbish.

Once Forest had scored a sketchy goal, gifted by a muddle in West Ham's defence six minutes before half time, they were content simply to avoid doing anything that might rouse their opponents from torpor as they took their tally under Stuart Pearce to seven points from four games.

Before the goal Forest had been just as awful, unable to string three passes together. The level had been set from the kick off. Pearce to Campbell, the ball rebounded 10 yards from his knee and Woan turned the incompetence into skill with a long shot. It was Campbell's best pass and he was replaced beyond the hour.

By then he had unwittingly become Forest's hero. Just after his header to Woan's corner had been cleared off the line by Hughes, Campbell stumbled upon a goal. Cooper's through ball was more a clearance than a thrust. Rieper failed to usher it back to Miklosko and Campbell got enough of a touch to keep it going beyond the goalkeeper into the net. It was the sort of goal that might have kept Frank Clark at Forest.

Harry Redknapp, West Ham's manager, was reduced to head shaking and hand wringing. "We give a goal away you wouldn't see on a Sunday morning," he said, "and then everyone gets edgier and edgier." And they were edgy enough already. They hardly middled a pass all afternoon. Crossley was untested in Forest's goal, watching the only decent effort, a glancing header by Porfirio, past a post.