Birmingham City 0, West Ham United 1: Noble strike earns Curbishley relief from weight of West Ham's worries

So busy is Alan Curbishley with putting out fires these days that it is a wonder he had time to orchestrate a victory of such calm and conviction as this.

The ongoing Carlos Tevez debate, stinging criticism of the opening-day flop at Upton Park, Paul Konchesky's rant and reports of a blazing row with Craig Bellamy – West Ham United's beleaguered manager had a season's worth of so-called crises to sort out in the first week.

His 2006 sabbatical must already seem light years away and, deep down, he might now be relieved the England job passed him by.

Delighted though he was with the thoroughly deserved win that buys him a week of relative solace, there was also weariness in what has always been regarded as a voice of sanity.

"Perhaps I had a fairytale existence at Charlton," he said. "Since I've been here, we seem to be on the back pages every day for the wrong reasons.

"We've had more publicity in six months than West Ham had in two seasons. A lot of stuff last year was nonsense and what you've heard about Bellamy is fabricated. More than ever this season, if a club finds itself in the bottom five or six, the manager is going to come under pressure because the prizes are so great."

When a guy as agreeable as Steve Bruce talks about big-club favouritism and refereeing howlers at the end of a week in which his club might well have conceded four penalties rather than the one they rightly lost to here, you know the heat's on.

West Ham would have left St Andrew's as clear winners had Bobby Zamora not finished so poorly and Craig Bellamy and the subdued Keiron Dyer not lost late one-on-one confrontations with Colin Doyle.

The Birmingham keeper's foolhardy lunge at Bellamy had enabled the excellent Mark Noble to dispatch the winner 20 minutes from time and no amount of bleating could disguise the fact that the home side survived a host of bad misses while creating precious little.

They urgently need a win while there's still some momentum from their bright goal-scoring play against Chelsea and Sunderland, otherwise Bruce can guess what the reaction will be.

"We've had a difficult start and we know it's going to be tough," he said. "We are under no illusions about that. The more time we have together, the better we'll become."