[ad_1]
There really is something to be done with these boring mid-table Premier League matches. Perhaps the next Project Big Picture mutation has something to say about props like these: two flawed and unambitious sides in pure survival mode, both finally thankful for the point. Maybe it’s time the likes of Everton and Aston Villa let Manchester City out of this world.
We’re kidding, something like that. But it said a lot, not just about this game, but about the careers of the two clubs involved, that at full time both sets of players seemed equally disappointed. West Ham may have used their luck a bit. They may have spent most of the last half hour defending. But this was a game that could easily go his way. They know, like most of their rivals, that this city is currently available.
This is not a new story. Its decline in the last 12 months has been gradual, inexorable, and naturally still marked by moments of true translucent inspiration, grand performances, towering individual flourishes. But at this moment they feel like a half-present team: a team against the current, moving in and out of their old self, able to glimpse it in parts, but never everything all the time.
This was a summary of many of his recent performances: dignified, professional, and yet essentially incomplete. His first half was abominable: a rhythm, short on ideas and curiously lacking in conviction.
The second, after the introduction of the sugary Phil Foden, was better. And once again, missed opportunities and flawed decision making proved the difference between one point and three. Sergio Agüero’s hamstring injury once again leaves them without a recognized striker. Instead, Raheem Sterling missed two good chances to win the game at the end.
Meanwhile, for David Moyes’s cautiously evolving team, another half step in the right direction. Having taken an early and spectacular lead with Michail Antonio’s flying boot, they weathered the inevitable second half backlash with guts, organization and judgment. Declan Rice was colossal in midfield. Lukasz Fabianski’s shortcuts kept them in him to death.
“We could have played a lot better,” Moyes said. “But the brilliant character of the players. We defended very well ”.
Antonio’s goal was a work of art: using Rúben Dias’s weight to get his body into position and unrolling a bicycle kick that passed Ederson, who he couldn’t see. City purposelessly howled a hand from Tomas Soucek, but it was their fault: João Cancelo found himself isolated, with very little pressure on Vladimir Coufal’s center.
Moyes’s game plan was working like a charm: a well-trained deep five, Jarrod Bowen’s pace at halftime, and with Antonio as a one-man chaos agent in front, there was always a pressure release available.
Two key moments changed the course of the game: Antonio’s injury in the 52nd minute and Foden’s tying goal shortly before.
His energy was just what City needed: a little human bath bomb, bubbling and fizzing and buzzing through the surface, sweetening City’s attacks and finding its way into the vital nooks and crannies of West Ham.
It took him six minutes to get City back on track, turning and finishing after Cancelo surprised Coufal with a blazing pace. With Antonio’s replacement, Andriy Yarmolenko, offering no threat, and with Kevin De Bruyne entering with a quarter of the game remaining, West Ham settled into a tenacious rear.
And yet, in the end-to-end pandemonium, it was telling that West Ham was just as poised to throw numbers as City. Pablo Fornals could have snatched the game in the final minutes when he tried to pitch Ederson and end up throwing him straight into his arms.
Honors even then, and on a chilly East London afternoon, he would have a hard time arguing that either side deserved less.
