West Ham continued their impressive recent run as they held Pep Guardiola’s Man City to a 1-1 draw at the London Stadium. Here are our talking points from this Game Week 6 fixture.
Pablo Fornals lying on the ground behind the wall for Kevin de Bruyne free kick:
This was an interesting tactic from West Ham, presumably to stop de Bruyne from going low when the wall jumped. The game was tied at 1-1 at that stage, with the Belgian maestro standing over the ball in a dangerous position. Will we see other teams adopting it in the future against KdB?
No minutes for Lanzini:
It was perhaps slightly surprising that Manuel Lanzini, the scorer of the stunning equaliser against Spurs last week, didn’t even make if off the bench for this clash.
Towards the end of the game, the Hammers had a very nice opportunity to make it 2-1, but a tired Pablo Fornals couldn’t quite execute a chip over City keeper Ederson in a 1v1 situation. Would a fresh Lanzini have been able to do that? Perhaps yes…
Speaking of substitutions, it was also worth noting that when Michail Antonio had to come off early in the second half, it was Andriy Yarmolenko who was his replacement and not Sebastien Haller. Yarmolenko stayed on the wing, with Jarrod Bowen occupying a more central position. When Haller did eventually come on, he had to wait for nearly TEN minutes for his first touch, and it was a defensive clearance at that! [Read more…]
