West Ham went to the Emirates and beat Arsenal 2-0. West Ham went to Anfield and beat Liverpool 3-0. And now today, West Ham went to the Etihad and beat Manchester City and their £300 million starting XI 2-1. The loss ends Manchester City’s 11 game team record winning streak.
Manchester City was without captain Vincent Kompany due to injury today and it showed. It very much showed on West Ham’s first goal. Victor Moses took a long shot from far away. The ball wasn’t really supposed to go into the back of the goal, it was more of an optimistic shot. Nevertheless, it snuck by the Man City defense, who left a huge hole where the ball was and past Joe Hart to open the scoring.
The second goal by West Ham was much more of a screwup by Manchester City as the ball sort of pinballed around the penalty area. The ball ended up on the foot of Diafra Sakho who doubled the score for the visitors and left Manchester City down two goals after not even being scored on at all their first five games of the season.
Manchester City still had some tricks up their sleeves as new guy Kevin de Bruyne put away a well finished goal that was on the ground and just got past Adrian. De Bruyne was already a great player at Wolfsburg, but he has really adapted to this Manchester City team. Although the results haven’t come as easily as they did before he arrived, his passing, finishing and ability to be the rock of the midfield will pay off dividends for the high amount of investment Manchester City gave for him.
Then once the second half started, Manchester City put together a onslaught against West Ham and tried to do all they could to score an equalizer. Adrian just wouldn’t give anything up and West Ham kept the win. The loss keeps Manchester City to the top of the table. For West Ham, they move up to 2nd place and will be no worse than 3rd after this weekend. Technically if Crystal Palace beats Tottenham by more than four goals, they’ll put West Ham in 4th but I’m going to assume that won’t happen. Not impossible, but it won’t happen.
I guess the prevailing question for Manchester City would be if they should panic. The short answer is no. Yes, they lost against West Ham but West Ham has beaten some talented teams already this year. While still a shocking upset, it wasn’t that far out of the realm that they were going to beat Manchester City. Also, it would be unrealistic to expect Manchester City to keep up with winning and keeping clean sheets in every game. Things were going to slip up eventually. And last, Manchester City has the points and is still in the top spot. Look at it this way, Manchester City is in a position where fans of every other Premier League team would kill to be in. Until that isn’t the case anymore, they’ll be just fine.
