33165 people packed into a damp Boleyn Ground to see West Ham attempt to extend their winning run against Bolton on October 5th. Congolese full-back Hérita Ilunga was born in the same city – Kinshasa – as Bolton’s Fabrice Muamba, whose father had to flee the fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo and claim political asylum in Britain, along with his family. Muamba is an England Under-20 international, but due to his refugee status, he can choose any of the home countries to pledge his international allegiance to. He could still choose the DR Congo, but that has little appeal due to the uncertain political outlook of the country and the fact that they have already been eliminated from both the next African Cup of Nations tournament in Angola and Africa’s World Cup. Muamba was a product of Arsenal’s academy, but he failed to live up to the billing as Patrick Vieira’s successor and initially moved on loan to Birmingham City, which became a permanent transfer at the start of last season. After Birmingham City was relegated he joined Bolton in the summer.

Ilunga has played in France and Spain before joining West Ham on loan from Toulouse. He has played for DR Congo and later backed off comments attributed to him that he only saw West Ham as a stepping stone. He created the first meaningful chance by winning a free-kick on the edge of the area that Julien Faubert curled past the wall, but it was not good enough to test Finnish international Jussi Jääskeläinen in Bolton’s goal. He was soon called into action on defensive duty to clear the free-kick conceded by Mark Noble for a foul on Grétar Steinsson that earned Noble a booking from referee Mike Dean.

Carlton Cole tried to beat Finnish international Jussi Jääskeläinen from twenty-five yards out – an excellent effort, but not sufficient to trouble the Finn. Bolton responded soon afterwards with a glorious chance for Swedish international Johan Elmander, but his weak effort trickled through to Green. Elmander looked a flop on this evidence, but he has discovered his goal-scoring touch subsequently. Bolton’s tactics of high balls into the area were dealt with by Mathew Upson and Lucas Neill with minimum fuss and left back clearly believed that attack is the best form of defence. An early foray to the left of Bolton’s penalty area by Ilunga was ended by his cross eluding everyone and everything including the far post. After Neill and Upson had repelled a spate of corners West Ham’s flowing football through Noble, Scott Parker and David di Michele almost earned a goal, but the Italian’s shot beat the post as well as Jääskeläinen. West Ham deserved to be ahead, but disaster struck. Robert Green failed to collect Jlloyd Samuel’s long pass on the edge of his area and dropped it at the feet of Kevin Davies who had the easy task of passing it into the unguarded net. Noble went close with a free-kick shortly afterwards, but instead of a deserved equaliser West Ham suffered a crushing blow, as Green cold not hold Steinsson’s volley and Gary Cahill had the simple job of doubling Bolton’s advantage. Adding injury to insult Ilunga was forced from the pitch for five minutes for treatment to an arm injury.

Zola had the opportunity to regroup at half-time, but was he calm enough to do so? “I wasn’t exactly calm,” said Zola, “but the point is you personalise things and when I’m losing a game I tell the players they should react quickly and make sure they do things exactly because from what I saw in the first half they didn’t deserve to be losing. I think that we were controlling the game; we had a couple of chances, but it’s not easy when you get caught and five minutes later you give another one away. It can really destroy your confidence, but I told the players that you stick to your game all the time. Sometimes you have to take a step back to take two steps forward.”