Before the game, one of the televisions in the press room was unplugged because Bolton’s team of match analysts needed the scart lead. It was an easy enough problem to fix. West Ham had a collective screw loose, and that proved somewhat more problematic.

This was always supposed to be a one-sided game, but the surprising thing was the identity of the one side. West Ham had kept four successive clean sheets at home in the league, while Bolton had not scored in their last five away, but the visitors were, in their own way, magnificent. On this evidence, Owen Coyle has not transformed their playing style, rather he seems to have supercharged it. We all know what Bolton do well, but they did it better. Much, much better.

West Ham were two down at half-time, and it could have been four or more. The goals came in the opening 16 minutes, from attacks down the right wing. Both were embarrassingly easy, the second particularly so.

In the 10th minute, Fabrice Muamba challenged Alessandro Diamanti in the centre circle, winning the ball. The Italian fell to the ground, clutching his leg, as play continued via Gretar Steinsson to Lee Chung-Yong. The Korean’s cross from the right curled back towards goal and landed on the head of the onrushing Kevin Davies, six yards out. Diamanti was barely back on his feet by the time the ball hit the back of the net.

Six minutes later, Steinsson chipped the ball down the inside-right channel, James Tomkins attempted to usher it out of play and Davies stole in to poke the ball towards the centre. Had the attack ended there it would have been embarrassing enough. It did not. To their credit, Bolton had two men in the box, gambling on Davies winning the ball. One of them, Tamir Cohen, headed the ball down and the other, Jack Wilshere, volleyed into the net.

It was a humiliating goal to concede, but there could have been more: Johan Elmander was allowed a free header from a long throw, and missed an easy chance in first-half stoppage time. From a Lee cross, Wilshere had a free header; if he had been any taller than 5ft 8in he would surely have scored. All of this before half-time.

Bolton could not keep up that level of intensity, and once Cohen was given a second yellow card with 20 minutes to play, their task became one of containment. West Ham threw on attacking players, but still they could not attack with conviction. With less than two minutes to go, Diamanti picked up a loose ball on the right wing, cut inside and shot inside the far post. He celebrated almost apologetically, as well he might. After a recent improvement, the shadow of relegation hangs over his side once again.

West Ham UnitedBolton WanderersPremier LeagueSimon Burntonguardian.co.uk

Today’s tell-all is wet, wet, wet

For the Mill, this has been a wavering, indecisive kind of January window, full unanswered questions and a sapping, deathly kind of lassitude. Like some wheezing, burbling flu-ridden insomniac, looking up towards dawn and seeing, finally, light at the edge of the curtains, the Mill senses it’s all very nearly over. And so many questions have yet to be resolved.

Questions like, does it really matter if a player who doesn’t really play much but instead just talks a lot about playing somewhere else begins suddenly to talk about talking about playing somewhere else somewhere else and not where he currently no longer plays much any more? This at least is the thrust of Robinho’s announcement this morning that he is finally really properly physically leaving Manchester City. In a bit maybe.

“I am going through a bad period,” Robinho said yesterday, slopping around in tracksuit trousers holding a pillow while eating muesli and occasionally crying at nothing in particular. “The directors all agree it’s better to send me out on loan,” he added, drawing a picture of the directors and explaining that they only come out at night. Robinho would like to go back to Santos because it’s his “home”.

Liverpool’s co-embarrassment Tom Hicks has sold his baseball team for £310m to a group of people that includes a lawyer called Chuck Greenberg and a pitcher called something that should relate to the law in an amusing fashion but unfortunately doesn’t. Rafael Benítez won’t get any of the money.

West Ham are about to “end James Beattie’s Stoke hell” by buying him for £3m. “I’d be hugely disappointed if we did not bring in a striker before the window closes,” David Gold whispered yesterday, putting a hand on your knee. Aston Villa have said they won’t loan Curtis Davies to Celtic. “We may well need Curtis. Things happen,” Martin O’Neill shrugged, making an “Iunnno….” noise.

In The Mirror Manchester United have been wandering around all day muttering “we buy any car. Any make any model any dum de dum. We buy any car. We buy any car” after finally working out a way to pay Wayne Rooney £150,000 a week so he doesn’t move to Spain. Sam Allardyce wants Bosnia winger Senijad Ibricic of 1970s European Cup nostalgia vehicle Hajduk Split. Morten Gamst Pedersen is off to Fenerbahce. And someone called Junior Hoilett is refusing to sign a new contract.

David Moyes is training his unblinking red-raw peeled-eyeball stare on Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and making him hum things to himself and pretend to be reading a newspaper. Spurs, Liverpool and West Ham are also interested. Marco Ruben is on his way to Wigan for £7m. Ruben plays for Villarreal reserves, but also scored on his debut for Argentina recently.

Marlon Harewood won’t be re-signing for Newcastle after breaking his foot in an undisclosed “freak training ground accident”, perhaps involving a misunderstanding with a celeriac, or falling backwards off his flimsy 1970s sun lounger while invisible people laugh uproariously like in the opening credits of Terry and June.

In The Mail Dynamo Moscow want to buy Yossi Benayoun from Liverpool for £7m. Standard Liége striker Milan Jovanovic could pass him heading the other direction after turning down a £3.5m-a-year move to Birmingham because he “wants a higher profile club”. Manchester City could be about to add Roma defender Marco Motta to their thriving new-build small town of random loanee travelling minstrel aces.

Arsenal really are going to sign Fulham reserve centre-half Chris Smalling for £8m. Smalling is 20 and used to play for Maidstone United in the Ryman Premier League. Lens striker and spell-check nightmare Toifilou Maoulida wants to play in the Premier League. West Ham, Wigan and Stoke are scratching about on the periphery looking urgent and friendly and trying to make decisive eye-contact. “I am in favour of the Lens project but the situation is complicated,” he said, sounding a bit queeny and fey and like he might be wearing some kind of beret. “The English league has always interested me.”

In The Times Galatasaray are performing a drunken version of the running man in front of Giovani dos Santos and hoping he’s kind of laughing with them. Birmingham City have held talks about signing Aruna Dindane, who is on loan at Portsmouth. David Moyes is keen to unwrap the waddling Swiss enigma Philippe Senderos. And Leeds United have agreed a fee for the blind Jewish New York jazz pianist of the 1950s and Leicester City winger Max Gradel.

According to Goal.com Harry Redknapp has offered scampering goal-gnome Robbie Keane to West Ham in an attempt to lure Carlton Cole to White Hart Lane. And Bayern Munich like the look of Steven Pienaar and his flapping judicial wig-style braids. Pienaar could be the man to replace the departing Franck Ribéry, who seems to have been departing for a really long time now, without doing any actual, real departing.

LiverpoolEvertonDynamo MoscowManchester CityVillarrealArsenalBolton WanderersManchester UnitedWest Ham Unitedguardian.co.uk