West Ham United went down battling in a 2-1 defeat to deposed Premier League champions Manchester City at the weekend.
The Hammers’ had their 5 match unbeaten run brought to an end by a slick passing City side looking to put the thought of Manchester United taking their title out of their minds.
Sam Allardyce’s team were pretty poor in the first half with the players seemingly unable to do even the simplest of things right, like passing the ball to a team-mate.
City prodded and probed at West Ham’s defence who were looking solid with Collins and Reid keeping the back four nice and tight, but it looked like it would only be a matter of time before the opening came with City wasting a string of half chances and the impressive Sergio Aguero hitting the post.
The scoring was opened in the 28th minute when City undone United’s defence with some clever and incisive passing, Samir Nasri found David Silva who provide a neat one two with the Frenchman who put the ball on a plate for Aguero to fire home from close range.
West Ham almost found themselves two down when Jaaskelainen parried a Nasri shot which was pounced on by Zabaleta only for Jaaskelainen to recover in time to make the save to deny the full back.
Second Half
West Ham were much improved in the second half, pressing City quickly and enjoying a good spell of possession and attacking football trying to find an equalizer.
Jarvis was seeing more of the ball and appealed for a penalty when his cross hit Zabaleta’s arm, but it would have been harsh as it was more ball to hand than anything else. However the referee did not seem to favour West Ham in any way all day with the majority of decisions going against our boys.
With the game nice and open there were chances at both ends with West Ham looking to get back in the game and City looking to put it to bed, unfortunately for West Ham the goal went to City, it was a magnificent thunderbolt of a strike from Yaya Toure which left Jaaskelainen with absolutely no chance.
West Ham continued to fight though and managed to net a consolation goal deep into injury time when Andy Carroll chested the ball down in the box and fired past Joe Hart.
Marc-Vivien Foe
In the 23rd minute of the game there was a warm one minutes applause for Marc-Vivien Foe who died 10 years ago, the Cameroon midfielder played for both City and West Ham during his career.
West Ham Manager
Sam Allaryce, speaking to the BBC said:
The second-half performance was more like us and, in the end, it was a stunning goal from Yaya Toure which secured the game for them.
Our goals away from home have been poor this year and we must improve on that next season.
We’ll hopefully address that in the summer but before that we have got three important games and we will try to keep improving our performances.
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