This was the season in which West Ham were supposed to have said farewell to Upton Park with a series of uplifting displays beneath the stands that bear the name of Bobby Moore and Trevor Brooking.
Instead, they have produced three outstanding displays outside the East End to record victories at Arsenal, Liverpool and now Manchester City.
This, on a ground where they had lost seven straight games, was far harder than anything they had achieved at the Emirates or Anfield. These may have been the first points City have dropped this season but the way they pummelled and pounded West Ham after falling two goals behind suggested there may not be many more. It was a defeat that strangely ought to have instilled confidence rather than despair in the home side. Manchester City 1 West Ham United 2 player ratings
The final hour of the game was played 20 yards in front of the goal defended heroically by Adrian San Miguel del Castillo (he deserves his full name) and Winston Reid. The cliché is that it was “like the Alamo out there” and so it was – only it seemed as if West Ham were facing machine guns rather than cannon fire.
The first sign that this was a game that had no script came with a fabulous shot from Victor Moses, who when he received the ball, had a thin screen of blue shirts in front of him. Eliaquim Mangala did not close him down nearly quickly enough and from 25 yards Moses directed his shot between the tips of Joe Hart’s gloves and the post.
It was the first league goal Manchester City had conceded this season and the first they had let in at the Etihad Stadium since Carlos Sanchez scored for Aston Villa in a 3-2 defeat here in April.
Victor Moses fired the opener past Joe Hart
At Chelsea, Liverpool and latterly at Stoke, Moses never seemed the footballer he once promised to be. However, after Monday night’s victory over Newcastle in which the Nigerian had shone, his manager, Slaven Bilic, remarked that Upton Park might be where he builds his reputation.
Most of the attention had been on another former Chelsea player who had better make his reputation in east Manchester, otherwise there will be some serious questions asked of how City thought Kevin de Bruyne worth £55m – three times the sum for which Chelsea had sold him to Wolfsburg.
This was his home debut in the Premier League and, even before he scored to pull the deficit back to 2-1, the impressions were good. De Bruyne seems bigger and more powerful than he had been during his time at Stamford Bridge. His crossing from the right was strong and when Fernandinho met his corner with a square-on header, Adrian rather skittishly punched it away with fists that would be in constant use.
Diafra Sakho reacted quickest to score the second
Seven minutes before the interval, he would employ the same fists to bat away a fabulous curling drive from Jesus Navas but there was nothing much the Spaniard could do when De Bruyne took a pass from Sergio Aguero and, having given Mark Noble the slip in midfield, had far too much time and space to pick his spot. He chose beautifully to begin a furious pounding of Adrian’s goal that would have seemed relentless to those who had travelled up from Essex and east London. When, just after the hour, Touré strode through as he had done so often for City, it appeared that they must equalise. The shot was a few inches wide.
Skittish would be a kind adjective to apply to the way Manchester City defended West Ham’s second goal. Winston Reid got his head to a corner from the right and Fernandinho should have cleared it at the far post but Pedro Obiang stretched out and got a part of his boot on the ball that sent it across the face of the goal, where Diafra Sakho met it before Touré. The fact that Sakho got to it first was not enough. The Senegal forward had to curl his right foot around the ball to turn it in.
Kevin De Bruyne scored his first goal for the club but it wasn't enough
Without their captain, Vincent Kompany, injured in the defeat by Juventus here on Tuesday night, Manchester City’s back four was in the hands of Nicolas Otamendi and Mangala, a pair of centre-halves who had cost the club £70m. Unlike De Bruyne, they did not remotely look value for money and during the interval Manuel Pellegrini replaced Mangala with Martin Demichelis, who had served him at three different clubs. It was time for men he could trust.
Manchester City: (4-2-3-1) Hart; Sagna, Otamendi, Mangala (Demichelis, h-t), Kolarov (Iheanacho, 84); Touré, Fernandinho; Navas, De Bruyne, Sterling (Bony, 66); Aguero.
West Ham United: (4-2-3-1) Adrian; Jenkinson (Collins, 85), Tomkins, Reid, Cresswell; Lanzini (Jelavic, 69), Payet, Moses (Antonio, 60); Sakho.
Referee: Robert Madley
Man of the match: Adrian (West Ham)
Match rating: 8/10
