Tag: #manchestercity

Miracles, Memories and Missed Bets: Reliving some of West Ham’s greatest moments against Manchester City

West Ham travel to Manchester this weekend to face City, and while I’d love to believe in an upset, history and current form make that hard to imagine. City are unbeaten in their last 19 Premier League games against us, winning 16, and we’ve lost 15 of our last 16 away games there. The only exception was in the final Boleyn season, when we managed a 2-1 win in September 2015, with Victor Moses and Diafra Sakho scoring before De Bruyne pulled one back just before half time. We held on for a famous victory that day.

City don’t show mercy to teams in the relegation zone; it’s been 46 games since they last lost to a team starting the day in the bottom three, and they’ve won the last 14 of those, scoring 43 and conceding just 7. If you’re hoping current form might give us a chance, City have won five of their last six league games to climb into second place, just two points behind Arsenal, while we’ve only managed one win in our last six, though we have picked up three draws.

Rather than dwell on the chances of an upset, I find myself reminiscing about the times we’ve managed to get the better of City. I sometimes like a small wager on the football, and over the years I’ve had my share of luck and disappointment. One memory stands out from 23rd March 1996, when City were struggling near the bottom of the table. I fancied a bet on the correct score and thought the odds on us winning 4-1 at 80-1 were too good to pass up. We had seats in the old West Stand lower, and I remember Ludo saving an early penalty from Kinkladze. Iain Dowie scored with a header for 1-0 at half time, and in the second half he added another from a corner. City pulled one back after a blunder from Ludo, but then Julian Dicks smashed in a screamer from 30 yards for 3-1. I started to believe my bet might come in, and when Dani tucked away a fourth, I was already counting my winnings. But in the dying seconds Niall Quinn scored for City, and the game ended 4-2. So near and yet so far – a terrific game, and a great result, but just a little personal disappointment at the end.

That wasn’t the only time fate played a hand. In the 2000-01 season, on Remembrance Day, I told colleagues about my unlucky 4-2 betting tale and fancied another go at 4-1. The new stand was under construction, and strong winds delayed kick-off. I forgot to place my bet, and as it turned out, despite being a goal down at half time, we won 4-1 again with a last minute Di Canio penalty. This time, missing the bet meant missing out on £165, as the odds had dropped to 33-1.

Among my earliest football memories is the 1959-60 season, when we beat City 4-1 during a run of eight wins in ten games. In 1962-63, we thrashed City 6-1 twice, home and away, and in 1966, shortly after England’s World Cup win, we beat them 4-1 at Maine Road with goals from Ron Boyce, two from Geoff Hurst, and Martin Peters. In 1968, we beat City 2-1 at Upton Park with two classic near-post headers, and perhaps the most famous game came in March 1970 on a mudbath of a pitch at Maine Road. Jimmy Greaves scored twice on his debut, but the highlight was Ron Boyce’s volley from 50 yards, and we won 5-1. In 1982-83, we beat City 4-1 again early in the season, and once more, City were relegated that year.

I haven’t had a correct score bet on a West Ham v Manchester City game since that day in 1996, almost 30 years ago. The odds for a 4-1 West Ham away win this weekend are 200/1, and just to win by any score is around 12/1. I think I’ll keep my fiver in my pocket this time. As much as I’d love to believe in a miracle, history suggests otherwise – but football is nothing if not unpredictable, and memories of those famous wins remind us that anything (however unlikely!) is possible.

West Ham face the stiffest Premier League test of all when Manchester City are the visitors on Saturday

Last Weekend at Palace

Before last Saturdays game at Selhurst Park I asked the question as to whether more of our summer signings would make the starting eleven. The answer was no. That was disappointing but I guess the head coach either believes they are not ready or he wants to give every chance to existing players to stake a claim. I was unable to see the game so had to make do with highlights. From those I would deduce that both Soucek and especially Bowen took their goals well in the second half, Kilman had yet another excellent game and looks to be a superb acquisition, and Wan-Bissaka too looked very good in the limited time he was on the pitch.

Kilman’s drive forward with the ball and well timed pass showed what a good ball-playing defender can add to a team. And Wan-Bissaka (ironically described as a world class one on one defender but limited going forward – not good enough for Manchester United anyway!) proved doubters wrong with some fine work down the right flank which led to Soucek’s goal.

There seemed to be chances at both ends in the first half with Eze (unluckily hitting the bar with Areola well beaten), Edouard missing a relatively easy chance, and both Antonio and Kudus missing chances where they could have done better.

I would also assume that Health and Safety people will be visiting the ground in view of the barrier that gave way when West Ham fans were celebrating Soucek’s goal. Well done to both Soucek and Bowen for rescuing what could have been a very serious situation.

That was my interpretation of the highlights. What did I miss?

Carabao Cup v Bournemouth

 I was disappointed (I suspect not the only one) when the starting line-up was revealed for the Palace game. I had hoped for Wan-Bissaka, Todibo, Fullkrug and Summerville to be in the starting eleven in place of Coufal, Mavropanos, Antonio and Soucek. But I am told that Mavropanos had a decent game (benefitting from playing alongside Kilman perhaps), and of course Soucek scored the opening goal so the right result was achieved. An important three points.

The summer signings who have yet to be involved from the start (or had minimal minutes on the pitch) will have been chomping at the bit to show what they can do in the all-Premier League cup tie against Bournemouth. The four I referred to all started in the game. The whole team looked rusty in the first half and it showed that they are not really up to speed yet in many cases. It didn’t improve much (if at all) in the second half until the substitutes appeared.

Wan-Bissaka was the pick of the four for me, I thought that he looked an absolute bargain for £15 million, once again showing attacking qualities as well as well-known defensive ones despite having to fill in at left back. For me he will provide so much more than Coufal. Once again Kilman looked very impressive. Alvarez was right on the ball from the off. For everyone else I’ll reserve judgement for the time being, although I thought that Coufal, Soucek and Mavropanos had very poor games.

Incredibly this is a competition that we have never won (although we have come close) yet in theory it is possibly the easiest trophy to lift with just a few wins needed to reach a Wembley final. Traditionally clubs field weakened teams in the earlier rounds to keep squad players happy and with the stronger squad that we appear to have assembled this time around you would hope that we would not be too disadvantaged, but at times in this game our team played like strangers who hadn’t played together (which I guess was the case!).

Bournemouth were rightly aggrieved to go out of the competition in the way that they did. After being robbed of a win last Sunday against Newcastle when VAR controversially disallowed a winner which went in off a shoulder, they would almost certainly have been saved by VAR this time, except it wasn’t in operation. Bowen was probably offside when the ball went in (it seemed) off his elbow, but neither of the two reasons that VAR would have found to disallow the goal were spotted by the officials and hence we went into the next round after a game that gave us little to get excited about.

The controversy doesn’t end there though. Winning the tie meant that we were ‘rewarded’ with a trip to Anfield in the next round, after a ‘rigged’ draw kept all the sides playing in the Champions League and Europa League apart. I remember the days when draws for domestic cup competitions were purely random! And don’t get me started about the draw for the Champions League and the other European competitions. To accommodate 36 teams in the Champions League which means more games (189 up from 125) and added revenue (£4.1 billion up from £3.1 billion) the draw for the new format (where ‘every game counts’) with a league phase replacing the traditional group games, was done using Artificial Intelligence. Apparently if the draw had been done in the traditional manual way with people unscrewing plastic balls taken from a bowl, it would have taken four hours with 1000 different balls in 36 bowls!

Historical memories of games v Manchester City

We have faced Manchester City 17 times in the Premier League since we last beat them in September 2015. Moses and Sakho put us 2-0 up in the first half that day before De Bruyne pulled one back just before half time. But we held on for a 2-1 win. Cresswell, Antonio and De Bruyne are the only survivors from that day that remain in the squads today. We did beat them 5-3 on Penalties in a League Cup tie in 2021 after drawing 0-0, and we have managed draws at Upton Park in 2016 and at the London Stadium in 2020 and 2022.

Back in March 1996 Niall Quinn deprived me of £400 in the fixture at Upton Park. City were a softer touch around that time and I had placed a £5 bet at 80-1 on us beating them 4-1 in the game. Unfortunately, Quinn scored with the last kick of the game and it ended 4-2! I should have repeated the bet four years later when, despite being 1-0 down at half time at Upton Park, we ran out 4-1 winners with goals from Lomas, Sinclair, Pearce, and a 90th minute penalty converted by Di Canio. But I didn’t.

In December 1994 Tony Cottee scored a hat trick in a 3-0 win at Upton Park. A year earlier in November 1993 we beat them 3-1 with goals from Burrows, Chapman and Matty Holmes. I remember that game as one of the first I can recall on Monday Night Football on Sky – it came shortly after Julian Dicks joined Liverpool in a swap deal which involved full back David Burrows and Mike Marsh coming to West Ham. To add some power to the forward line Lee Chapman was bought from Portsmouth.

A memory from the 1980s from September 1982 – at Upton Park we beat City 4-1 (that score has featured a few times hasn’t it in history) – Sandy Clark notched a brace (do you remember him?), Paul Goddard and our skilful Belgian Francois Van der Elst scored the goals.

In March 1970 we were struggling in the league and were 17th in the table. A new goalscorer was needed and one arrived when a swap deal was arranged with Tottenham as Martin Peters joined Spurs and the legendary Jimmy Greaves arrived at Upton Park. Greaves first game was at Maine Road in pouring rain on a mudbath of a pitch and was covered by Match of the Day in the days when only one game was shown on the programme. Greaves scored twice, Geoff Hurst scored twice and Ronnie Boyce scored from 50 yards volleying back City keeper Joe Corrigan’s kick from his penalty area straight into the net. An unforgettable game.

My memory stretches back even further to the 1962-63 season. We met fellow strugglers (we were 19th at the time) Manchester City early in the season (September) and beat them 6-1 at Maine Road. We faced them again on the final day of the season and again beat them 6-1 to relegate them from the top-flight. We had improved as the season progressed and finished twelfth.

Although City were co-founders of the initial Premier League when it was created in 1992 (they finished ninth in the first season) they then struggled and were relegated in 1996 – the season I referred to earlier writing about the late Niall Quinn goal – I won’t forgive him! After two seasons they then fell to the lowest point in their history when they were relegated to the third tier. Younger fans will find it hard to believe that City were that low at the end of the twentieth century, just a quarter of a century ago.

This Saturday’s Game v Manchester City 

Of course facing the modern Manchester City is an entirely different proposition to the fixtures against them in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s that I highlighted above. The revival began at the turn of the century and following purchase by the Abu Dhabi Group in 2008 they have gone from strength to strength with massive investment.

Following the appointment of Pep Guardiola in 2016 they have achieved unprecedented success. In the seven seasons from 2017 to 2024 they have won six league titles and finished second once. In 2022-23 they achieved the treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League. In short, they are almost unbeatable and, as I wrote earlier we haven’t beaten them in our last 17 attempts in the Premier League going back nine years.

They already top the Premier League after just two games this season following a comfortable 2-0 win at Chelsea and then beating newcomers Ipswich 4-1 last Saturday. Six points and six goals already – Haaland has four of them. He has also scored four times in four league games against us and is an obvious danger once again, although they are so strong throughout the team, we will have to be at the very top of our game and hope they are below par to stand any chance.

Once our newcomers have bedded in I have no doubt that we will be a stronger team (and have a stronger squad) than we have been in under the previous manager. However, these are still early days and perhaps it would have been better for us to face the stiffest test of all in the Premier League after more time together. Undoubtedly we have some excellent attacking players – let’s hope for an early season surprise on Saturday. Bookmakers don’t think there will be. We are quoted at about 6/1 to win the game with City at 1/3 and the draw at 4/1. Can we defy the odds? We’ll need to improve considerably on our performances in the past week to do so.

West Ham visit the Etihad Stadium this weekend, but it will take a miraculous turnaround in form and recent history of the fixture to deprive Manchester City of their fourth title in a row.  

It was back in early March as the season approached the three-quarter mark when I tried to assess our chances of finishing in the top seven which would probably give us the opportunity to qualify for Europe next season via our finishing league position. At that time I looked at the teams who were in 6th to 11th, and they were as follows (all had eleven games remaining apart from Chelsea with twelve)

6. Manchester United 44 points (27 games)
7. West Ham 42 points (27)
8. Newcastle 40 points (27)
9. Brighton 39 points (27)
10. Wolves 38 points (27)
11. Chelsea 36 points (26)

I looked at the degree of difficulty in the remaining fixtures for each side based upon the position in the league table of their remaining opponents at that time. The degree of difficulty factor suggested that Newcastle had the easiest run-in with the average positions of opponents as follows: Newcastle 12.2, Manchester United 11.7, Chelsea 10.6, Wolves 10.0, West Ham 9.5, Brighton 9.0.

I then predicted the results of each teams remaining games with a formula based upon fixtures remaining, whether or not the remaining games were home or away, and the results when the sides met earlier in the season. Additional factors included games against the top 5 teams, and games against each other. This gave me a prediction of the final standings:

6. Manchester United – 61 points
7. Newcastle – 57 points
8. West Ham – 57 points
9. Wolves – 55 points
10. Chelsea – 54 points
11. Brighton 51 points

Bookmakers at that time had Manchester United and Newcastle finishing sixth and seventh, Brighton and Chelsea above us in eighth and ninth with West Ham just scraping into the top half in tenth. It was just a bit of fun, and my gut feeling was that we’d be fortunate to do as well as this, I wrote that perhaps tenth was just about right. Football matches are notoriously unpredictable to forecast which stems from various factors like team dynamics, player and overall team form, European and FA Cup games to play, the Thursday / Sunday mix which is often an issue, injuries, and even unpredictable events during a game, as well as all sorts of other miscellaneous factors.

With the final games to play on Sunday, 6th downwards reads as follows:

6. Chelsea – 60 points (H v Bournemouth)
7. Newcastle – 57 points (A v Brentford)
8. Manchester United – 57 points (A v Brighton)
9. West Ham – 52 points (A v Manchester City)
10. Brighton – 48 points (H v Manchester United)
11. Bournemouth – 48 points (A v Chelsea)
12. Crystal Palace – 46 points (H v Aston Villa)
13. Wolves – 46 points (A v Liverpool)

My original thought that 57 points might just be enough for 7th was just a little short of the mark. Chelsea have finished the season strongly, and Newcastle have done well since the turnaround in their game against us, but other contenders such as Manchester United, Wolves, Brighton and ourselves have been inconsistent. After a poor start to the season Bournemouth have improved considerably, and Crystal Palace are second only to Manchester City on recent form with 16 points from their last six games, but their improvement was much too late.

We have 52 points and I will be very happy but massively surprised if we add to that in the final game. We are five points shy of my prediction; those five points were lost in two home games that I was hoping we would win, against Burnley where we drew 2-2 and Fulham where we went down 2-0. Other than that I would have been spot on. We might have even exceeded the 57 point mark had we held on to our 3-1 lead in Newcastle.

But it was not to be and our poor record in the latter half of the season has let us down after entering 2024 in sixth place. We are guaranteed to finish in ninth place (exactly halfway between my forecast and my gut feeling) whatever the outcome this weekend. We are eighth when it comes to scoring goals, but in the bottom four when it comes to conceding them, and therein lies the main problem.

In our articles throughout the season, particularly in the last few months, we have discussed what we believed were the shortcomings of the manager, but this will be his last game and we must now await was lies ahead in the summer and beyond.

Social media articles have already started the Lopetegui in / out debate before he has already been officially announced as the new ‘head coach’! The two sides have been debating whether or not he will lift us off our seats with enterprising, entertaining, attacking football? Will he be far removed from what we have witnessed in the past four years? How good is his record? To me on paper it looks very sound, but he has had some good teams / players to work with (Porto, Spain, Real Madrid, Sevilla). His overall record as a manager shows a 57% win rate from over 400 games.

Statistically, David Moyes record (in a West Ham context) is very sound too, but results in the last season and a half have been less than convincing apart from the European adventure and trophy. The football played in so many games has not been good enough, tactically he has been left wanting frequently, and we have suffered a number of heavy (embarrassing) defeats.

I won’t enter the debate on the new head coach until he is here and will wait to see what happens in the next few months. He certainly has a big job to do in overhauling the squad with many out of contract and ageing players. David Moyes apparently likes working with small squads and it certainly caught up with him in the end.

I have been thinking about some of the players that we’ve sold or sent out on loan in the last year. Pablo Fornals was a Spanish international when he came to us, did a reasonable if unspectacular job here, and now at Real Betis is creating more chances than virtually everyone in the Spanish league. Thilo Kehrer, a German international, never seemed to be at his best here, yet just take a look at his spectacular statistics at Monaco. Said Benrahma, superb for Brentford, comes to us, clearly not fancied by the manager, confidence disappears, is now turning it on at Lyons. Flynn Downes, always looked a decent player to me when given an opportunity here, but allowed out on loan to Southampton, where Russell Martin described him as their key player in the push for promotion. Freddie Potts, on loan at Wycombe, their player of the year. Perhaps one or more of these could have been more than useful in the squad in the disappointing second half of the season where a European place beckoned at the turn of the year but faded in 2024. But no we turned to Kalvin Phillips, a seasoned England international but way off the pace sitting on the Manchester City bench who has cost us millions. That turned out well, didn’t it?

Several positions need strengthening but for me a key priority is at the back, in particular central defence where for so long we have lacked pace to deal with the speed of Premier League attackers. Will Paqueta stay? Personally, I’m not bothered either way. He has undoubted talents but application can be lacking at times, and I’d hope that the £85million could be spent as wisely as it was when Declan Rice left a year ago with Kudus, Alvarez and JWP, all of whom I believe can offer much in the future if used in the right way, in the right positions, alongside Hammer of the Year Jarrod Bowen.

For some time now our Academy and youth teams have produced outstanding results, but this has not been reflected in players coming through into the First Team squad. There are high hopes for George Earthy and I would hope others too can get opportunities in the squad. Hopefully the new head coach will be able to bring on the youngsters more than has happened in recent times.

We’ve been known to spoil a Manchester party in the past but it is hard to imagine us halting the City celebrations this time around. At the end of the game at Tottenham they were celebrating as if the title was already theirs with just little old West Ham with the fragile defence to come in the final game. They were preparing their abacuses to take to the game.

Unlike a number of social media posts I’ve read where supposed West Ham fans want us to lose to deprive Arsenal of the title, because of their dislike or hatred of Arsenal and the Rice factor, I am in the opposite camp. You are entitled to your opinion but I hold an entirely different view. I may dislike some teams, but hate? No.

I would never ever want us to lose a game to influence what happens elsewhere. To any of you who want us to lose why not consider the bigger picture? If we did manage to hold or even (very unlikely) beat Manchester City then just think how brassed off Tottenham fans will be that Arsenal have won the title and West Ham were largely responsible for that happening. Surely you dislike Tottenham even more than Arsenal?

I always want us to win every game we play. I have no problems with Declan Rice and wish him well – he did a great job in a West Ham shirt. Personally I’d be more than happy if the Manchester City domination of the Premier League title was broken.

But realistically it would take a miracle. But miracles do happen very occasionally. Bookmakers have City at 1/12 to win the game (and the title) with West Ham at 20/1 and the draw at 11/1.

An interesting summer lies ahead.

West Ham Play Cameo Role In End Of The Piers Show

The curtain comes down on another Premier League season with the Hammers involved in final day drama at The Etihad. Is there any chance of derailing a fourth successive title for Manchester City?

So here we are again. The final Premier League weekend of the season and the now traditional shifting of the weekend’s fixtures so that supporters must make their way home on Sunday rail replacement bus services once the action is over.

With almost all of the league’s placings now settled, TV executives at least have a theoretical title-decider to ramp up the afternoon’s excitement. The helicopter will be parked up in Birmingham awaiting final instructions on whether the mad, last-minute dash with the trophy is to The Emirates or The Etihad. I say, theoretical, because all that sits between Manchester City and a fourth successive title are the serial roll-over merchants from West Ham.

The Super Sunday crew would have been furious with Son Heung-min for missing that late chance to equalise on Tuesday night. The prospect of the two protagonists going into the final day equal on points would have been mouthwatering (© Peter Drury.) Then it would have come down to a first past the post who can outscore who contest. Now Manchester City have the luxury of only needing to win by any score, in a fixture they have been triumphant in on the last seven occasions.

Among the straws being clutched at by Piers Morgan and his pals down the Hornsey Road is that David Moyes has a surprisingly good record in games against Manchester City, ignoring the fact that most of that happened while the Citizens were just another football club. When Moyes has faced Pep Guardiola, the playing field has been about as level as lion versus wildebeest.

The game will, of course, be Moyes final farewell and he may well be chuffed with a third top ten finish in four years. Looking back at my pre-season predictions I had West Ham down as finishing 13th. So, in some ways, he has exceeded my expectations. I just wouldn’t want to have to sit through it all again. At least he was able to sign off with a last home win last weekend once his side had woken up in the second half to ease past relegated Luton. No sooner had I been cursing the manager’s decision to opt for the terrible midfield double pivot of James Ward-Prowse and Tomas Soucek than both popped up to score. Yet, I shudder to think what might happen if he starts with the same pairing again on Sunday.

The decision to make Edson Alvarez the scapegoat for defeat to Chelsea was baffling. Alvarez has been one of the top performers all season and has sometimes acted alone in not treating the game passively. Maybe a ball-winner is surplus to requirements in a side set up not to have it.

It is hard to imagine Moyes making any radical changes for his last game. It will be the usual favourites playing their usual roles in the usual low block. My prediction is that it will hold out until the 17th minute – and will be downhill from there. City just have too much quality to resist the charge just by putting as many bodies as possible in the way. They will eventually find a way through, past, or around.

The best hope is that a Premier League lawyer will run onto the pitch in added time to announce that City’s punishment for 115 breaches of the rules is to award the game to West Ham. I wonder if City will be stripped of their titles if found guilty of cheating?

In conclusion, my 2023/24 awards go to:

Player of the Year: Jarrod Bowen
Best Goal: Mohammed Kudus versus Freiburg
Best Goal (Premier League): Mohammed Kudus versus Brentford (away)
Bench Warmer of the Year: Divin Mubama
Annual Roberto Shocking Signing Award: Kalvin Phillips

Wouldn’t it be nice to believe the Hammers could be worthy opponents today. Not for anyone else’s sake but our own. It doesn’t make much difference to me who wins the league. I see no lesser between the two evils. How about countering the earlier cynicism with dreams of a last-minute Vladimir Coufal winner? COYI!

How can West Ham beat Manchester City this weekend?

While Manchester City has been a dominant and formidable team in recent years, no team is invincible and they can be beaten or stopped from winning. Upsets happen in football. If we have a well-thought-out game plan and execute it effectively then of course we have a chance. That is not to deny that it will be difficult against the best club side in England, Europe and probably the World. But they are not immune to defeats and do not win all the time. In their 19 Premier League games on the road on their way to yet another title last season they won 11, drew 4 and lost 4. That means that they didn’t win in 42 per cent of their away games.

Like any football team Manchester City can be beaten through a combination of strategies and factors, which do include luck. I think we can all guess David Moyes’ tactical approach to the game? It has been successful to date in this campaign but have we done our homework? We know their playing style but have we identified any weaknesses in their formation or strategy? Can we adjust our tactics to exploit these weaknesses? Make no mistake, as good as they are they do have weaknesses.

Four teams did beat City last season, Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham, and Brentford (twice – home and away!). I’d like to think that we have the resources to study all our opponents in detail but especially those games to try to understand how they were beaten and formulate our plans to achieve this ourselves. Also, there were five drawn games. How did Newcastle, Villa, Everton, Forest and Brighton avoid defeat in games against the champions? They do have areas of vulnerability. Can we capitalise on them? Can we exploit gaps in their defence, pressurise their midfield, disrupt their game plan and create opportunities to score ourselves?

A highly organised defence and disciplined marking are hallmarks of Moyes’ tactics. Narrow defending and numbers behind the ball are key elements that he believes in, with defenders who are able to deal with crosses all day, and hopefully limit shots to long range. Effective pressing can disrupt City’s attacking flow and limit their goal-scoring opportunities, but how deep will we try to defend? Despite our excellent start to the season we haven’t yet kept a clean sheet, conceding one goal in each of our four games. Late goals conceded (in the Bournemouth, Brighton and Luton games highlight the difficulty of maintaining defensive concentration for the full 90 (or 100) minutes. Areola has demonstrated why he is now Moyes’ number one choice and has already made numerous crucial saves. This game should be a real test.

Manchester City always dominate possession whereas our plan generally involves being happy to concede the ball. They attack in numbers and as a result could be susceptible to quick counter attacks. The key to this is the speed of the counter attacking which has been a key feature of our early games. Teams with fast, skillful players have exploited the spaces left behind by City’s attacking players and caught them off guard. Do we have the players who can emulate this? Antonio is a key component of our counter attacking strategy, but the pace of Benrahma and Bowen and the support from Ward Prowse are important too.

Set pieces such as free kicks and corners were a feature of our success a couple of seasons back, but much less so last time. Capitalising on these opportunities and utilising effective set-piece strategies can lead to goals and put Manchester City under pressure. In James Ward-Prowse we have now acquired a master of the set-piece delivery which has already proved fruitful. Also, in the past four games I have been itching to see us get a free kick around 20-25 yards from goal where he is second only to Beckham in his ability to score but alas it hasn’t happened. Perhaps in this game?

I’ve often wondered in the past if we have been fully mentally prepared in advance of games against the top sides. Moyes’ record as a manager in such games is not the best. Approaching the game with a positive mindset, belief in our abilities, and tactical discipline can and will make a difference. Confidence and focus are essential when facing a formidable opponent like City. The confidence in the team appears to be sky-high, perhaps as a result of winning a European trophy last season, and perhaps as a result of the key new signings to replace the loss of Rice. We haven’t yet seen the surprise element of potentially the most exciting signing of them all, Kudus. I have read articles suggesting that he can bring something extra to the team in the same way as Payet did a few years ago. If he can then that will be great, but we will see. Whether or not he will be unleashed from the beginning against City we don’t know yet.

Football is an unpredictable game. If you’ve supported West Ham for any length of time you’ll know that we can be unpredictable from one season to the next, from one game to the next, and even from the first half to the second half of a game. But upsets can happen. Our wins against Chelsea and Brighton were good examples of that. According to the bookmakers’ odds it would be an even bigger upset if we were to win this game. We are upwards of 6/1 to win whilst City are around 2/1 on, with the draw (which wouldn’t be the worst result for us) at 7/2.

While Manchester City are a strong team, perhaps the best around at the moment, and the toughest opponent we are likely to face this season, they are not unbeatable. Can we defy the odds? COYI!

Exclusive: West Ham Unlikely To Win At The Etihad Stadium Tonight

A weary, relegation threatened West Ham team and a manager with no plan for winning travel to meet the unstoppable champions-elect in Manchester this evening. What could possibly go wrong?

David Moyes dreadful managerial record in away games to top sides – no wins in 70-odd attempts – comes under the spotlight again as West Ham visit Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium this evening. In a fixture that would feature as the least winnable match of the season, even in the best of circumstances, is effectively a ‘gimme’ for the home side based on current trajectories and historic performance.

The Citizens are unbeaten in the Premier League since losing to Tottenham (yes, really) on 5 February. Since then, they have won ten and drawn one in their customary storming end to the season. At home they have dropped just five points in 16 games.

By contrast, West Ham go into the game off the back of two consecutive defeats. The short-lived feel-good factor following the win at Bournemouth now a distant memory. If a few positives could be taken from the unfortunate home defeat to Liverpool, the performance at Crystal Palace has to be one of the most abysmal of the season. With a final scoreline that seriously flattered the Hammers, and failed to represent the gulf between the two teams, this was Moyesball at its most depressing. Having witnessed this cautious, uninspiring fare for the best part of eighteen months has become so painful that the Sisyphean task of rolling a huge rock uphill for eternity is starting to look attractive. Please pray to your favourite deity that this is Moyes propreantepenultimate match in charge as West Ham manager.

If there was any mitigation for the Palace display it was the unhelpful Saturday lunchtime kick-off in the middle of West Ham’s intense fixture schedule. A situation exacerbated by an over-reliance on a handful of core players – particularly Declan Rice, Jarrod Bowen, and Michail Antonio – who looked exhausted and frustrated. It has become a carbon copy of last season’s run-in where fatigue saw the team stumbling across the finishing line having fallen away in both domestic and European competition.

Palace only needed a basic competence to dominate the game on Saturday. In Zaha, Eze, and Olise they have players with pace, close control, and an ability to run with the ball that is missing from the Hammers midfield. All the visitors could offer was a threat from set pieces. Strange that the goal finally separating the two sides was a penalty awarded for a blatant dive – one that VAR deemed to be acceptable. It was the second poor penalty related decision that went against West Ham in four days -decisions that could still turn out to be significant and costly. Equally strange, were the strange substitutions and the Hammers reluctance to go all out for an equaliser once the score had been brought back to 4-3 with 20 minutes to play.

I’m not as confident as some Hammers fans that survival is all but guaranteed this season. We are certainly better placed than the five teams below us, but the probability of failing to pick up any more points is not as remote as might be believed. Tonight is the game in hand with a danger that the goal difference advantage will not be quite as healthy once it is over. Although, in practice West Ham have saved their heftier drubbings by City for home games.  

Manchester City are now firm favourites to claim their third Premier League title in a row, making it five in ten years – unless they are relegated for the 100 or more breaches of FA rules and regulations under investigation. City have become even more formidable under the leadership of Pep Guardiola during a period where the other would-be title pretenders have all struggled for consistency. Guardiola is widely recognised as a tactical genius but needs a Champions League win or two to cement that title. Genius or not, he operates with a spectacular financial advantage compared to others with a bottomless transfer kitty. Scouting the goal scoring machine that is Erling Haaland was hardly a difficult, insightful or risky decision to take. Even under the guidance of Moyes at West Ham, Haaland would be leading scorer with seven or eight goals by now!

With a trip to Real Madrid to prepare for next week, Guardiola may rest key players for tonight’s game. Not that it will affect the result, but it might keep the score down a little. Moyes may be equally tempted into a spot of squad rotation with games against Manchester United and AZ Alkmaar to come in the next eight days. But we should remember that a slightly weakened Manchester City team is a very different beast to a slightly weakened West Ham one.

Both Rice and Bowen deserve a break and Antonio needs careful management. Rice has played every Premier League minute so far this season, and Bowen has missed just 22 minutes. Although Antonio has only played the equivalent of 18 games this season, he has featured heavily in all recent matches since the penny dropped that in buying Danny Ings, West Ham have yet again recruited a player wholly unsuited to the role required by the manager.

The reason that Moyes has such a terrible record away to top sides is that he approaches these games with the sole intention of trying not to lose. That this strategy has largely failed has never deterred him from giving it one more try. I’m sure he will play with five at the back again today with a game plan of all behind the ball and hoof it away as far as possible, hoping to win an occasional corner for an attempt on goal. My best guess is for West Ham to enjoy around 12% possession. Our best hope? That City get a couple of goals in front and then declare, conserving energy for the more challenging tasks in the weeks ahead. What a waste. COYI!