Slaven Bilic’s West Ham are turning into away specialists. Three of their four victories this season have been on their travels, and as the wins have come at the Emirates, Anfield and now the Etihad, no one could accuse them of going about it the easy way.
This was not quite as gobsmacking as the first two, except that Manchester City did happen to be top of the league with a 100% record before kick-off, and did not actually play that badly. West Ham spent much of the second half penned back defending their penalty area doughtily while their opponents played pinball around them. On another day, perhaps with David Silva, City might have managed to salvage something.
They certainly had enough possession in inviting areas, but the visitors held out to take the points thanks to the lead they took in the first half, before the league leaders had fully awoken to the danger.
“We didn’t nick it,” Slaven Bilic said. “If City had managed an equaliser I would be the first to admit they deserved it, but we had our goal chances too. This was different to our other wins. We knew we would have to score here, because with all respect to Liverpool and Arsenal, this is the best team in the league.”
West Ham are up to second but Bilic is not setting any targets. “Only the big clubs have targets,” he said. “We are just going to try to play good football and win all our games. Where it will take us I don’t know, but it should be a good journey.”
City’s perfect start to the Premier League season included five clean sheets in their opening five wins, yet it took West Ham just a fraction over five minutes to put a dent in that record. Taking a pass from Dimitri Payet and turning towards goal, Victor Moses was allowed to size up his options from 25 yards before beating Joe Hart with a low drive. It was not the start City would have been hoping for after losing in the Champions League here in midweek, especially as they had already lost Silva to a calf injury sustained in the warm-up. Jesús Navas was hastily promoted to the right wing before kick-off and Kevin De Bruyne made his first City start in the centre of the advanced midfield trio behind Sergio Agüero.
The Argentina striker had missed most of the Juventus game with a knee problem but started here and could have put his side back on level terms just three minutes after West Ham took the lead. Agüero seemed to have done all the hard work in pouncing on Aaron Cresswell’s mistake and reaching the ball before Adrián, who had raced out of his area in an attempt to intercept, yet with the goalkeeper stranded and only a couple of defenders guarding the line the City forward still contrived to miss the target.
City responded as they knew they must, with Yaya Touré beginning to exert himself in midfield and De Bruyne showing up well under close pressure, though little was created and West Ham extended their lead just past the half hour when the home side were unable to defend a corner. Winston Reid met Moses’s cross from the right with his head, Pedro Obiang did well to turn the ball back across the face of the goal, and with the defence ball-watching, Diafra Sakho seized his chance to poke in from close range.
City were adamant that the ball had not fully crossed the line when the corner was given in the first place, though that could hardly be offered as an excuse. “We conceded two easy goals,” was Manuel Pellegrini’s terse verdict.
Agüero was having something of an off-day, falling over when De Bruyne found him in space, shooting wastefully high on a couple and finding only Adrián’s arms when Bacary Sagna set him up with a cross to the near post from the right. He made some amends on the stroke of the interval, however, striding purposefully forward before squeezing out the pass from which De Bruyne scored his first City goal. The £55m Belgian did not hang about, beating Adrián with a crisp shot from just outside the area to reduce the interval deficit to a single goal.
City could count themselves slightly fortunate that Sakho had not widened West Ham’s lead moments earlier. He evaded Aleksandar Kolarov’s challenge to leave himself with only Hart to beat, then waited a fraction of a second too long and allowed Eliaquim Mangala the chance to get back and rescue the situation.
That turned out to be Mangala’s last involvement, for he failed to appear for the second half, with Martin Demichelis taking the field to join his compatriot Nicolás Otamendi in central defence. City looked sharper after the break, with Touré rolling an early shot just wide and Adrián preventing what would have been an own goal from Reid, under pressure from Agüero.
Raheem Sterling, almost anonymous in the first half, looked livelier in the second period but kept being caught in possession.
Although Sakho had a brief chance after staying onside and sliding a shot wide of the target, West Ham were living dangerously by the hour mark. When Touré turned a tired looking defence he seemed certain to score, yet with the whole of the goal to aim at he drilled his shot past a post. De Bruyne was practically running the game by this stage, showing marvellous touch and vision, generally to find Navas in particular incapable of delivering a decent final ball.
Lacking any other wing options Pellegrini sent on Wilfried Bony for Sterling for the final quarter, doubling the central threat but increasing the reliance on Navas to produce a telling cross. He did not manage it. Agüero and Bony were becalmed in the middle, so it fell to Otamendi to produce a late fingertip save from Adrián, and West Ham had their win. They deserved it too, for a committed all round display.
City have effectively done a Chelsea in reverse. José Mourinho now has the back-to-back wins he demanded last week to steady a lurching ship. Pellegrini and his players, after a month of plain sailing, are suddenly looking at back-to-back defeats. While Pellegrini claimed De Bruyne’s outstanding debut “didn’t matter, because winning was more important”, supporters are unlikely to judge the matter quite as harshly. City crowds like their heroes, and the Belgian looks to be made of the right stuff.
