Despite what David Moyes' lineup foreshadowed, the Hammers have held their own and proven they deserve to be fourth in the championship.
Defeated on the Manchester City lawn this Saturday (2-1), the Londoners showed a real good face, even if they weakened a little at the end of the meeting, the fault perhaps of late coaching on the part of David Moyes (first change in the 82nd).
The Hammers, initially very shy in willingly leaving control of the ball to Manchester City, revealed themselves as the match progressed.
Surely intoxicated by the (very) bad start to the game by Kévin De Bruyne, West Ham has put more and more danger on the Mancunian defense, especially on the counters.
Not a great Manchester City
The more precisely their transmissions found a recipient, the more one felt that the Citizens did not have a phenomenal margin.
Finally, the locals still opened the scoring, thanks to De Bruyne who sent a magnificent cross to Ruben Dias (30th).
By signing his eleventh assist of the season, the Belgian has shown that even when he is a tone below, he is capable of class actions.
Stunned by this goal, the Hammers took a few minutes before getting back to the place and registering the goal of the equalizer (1-1, 43rd) by Antonio, who had already been close to deceiving Ederson four minutes more Early on. Throughout the game, the Hammers were very disciplined and aggressive defensively.
If it looked more like reluctance at the start of the meeting, this spirit turned out to be quite interesting.
They were also able to take advantage of the astonishing nonchalance of Manchester City.
Long phases of possession, as usual, but sterile, agreed and borrowed from a lot of technical waste.
Some Citizens really looked asleep in this meeting.
14th win in a row in the Premier League
Excellent lately, Gündogan is one of them.
The midfielder has never been able to speed up the game and even slowed it down at times.
Ryad Mahez, the Algerian winger, was also particularly unfortunate.
He was hardly dangerous except on the second goal where it was he who gave the ball to Stones (2-1, 68th).
He especially benefits from the great passivity of Ben Johnson, who was content to watch the ball in the feet of the former Le Havre, without ever really wanting to take the ball from him.
With this victory, Manchester City has a 20th consecutive success in all competitions, a 14th straight league victory and a 27th game without defeat.
If this is a bad transaction from an accounting perspective for the Hammers, the content is rather reassuring, and they could well land a surprise ticket for the Champions League at the end of the season.
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