He was left completely unmarked to head in Kevin de Bruyne’s free kick as goalkeeper Adrian glared at his defence.
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While it seemed to be a guaranteed simple home win midway through the second period, from nowhere, West Ham turned the game on its head to pull one back in the 58th minute. “We can’t play much better than we did in the second half especially when you are missing six seven eight players and you play against them”.
Pep Guardiola says Manchester City’s form at the start of the season has been even better than he could have expected.
In the second half, Bilic pushed Antonio further forward and he headed in a cross by Arthur Masuaku.
City opened then new league campaign with a scrappy 2-1 home win against Sunderland but, since then, they have been close to immaculate, bookending a 1-4 thrashing of Stoke at the Britannia with 0-5 and 1-0 defeats of Steaua Bucharest which secured the Manchester club’s place in the Champions League group-stages.
“I wasn’t happy at halftime”, Bilic said. Praise for the team for the second-half performance.
Joe Hart is widely expected to leave the Citizens in the latter stages of the transfer window, but the England global was on the bench against the Hammers, which left Wilfredo Caballero with the gloves once again.
Earlier, West Bromwich Albion missed a chance to move into the top six when they were held to a 0-0 draw by Middlesbrough despite making the better opportunities in a boring game.
Middlesbrough, promoted last season under Spaniard Aitor Karanka, took 73 minutes to have a shot on target but held on to maintain their unbeaten record after three games.
He set up the one shot on goal, by Cristhian Stuani.
“It was an important point”, Karanka told Sky Sports.
Man City had the ball in the back of the net for a third time early in the second period when Nolito converted from close range, but the home side’s celebrations were cut short due to the offside flag, before the Spanish worldwide curled one into the side-netting from outside the box.
“We hung on until half time and I didn’t ask my team to turn the game around, just to show their qualities and enthusiasm and we did that”, he said.
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“I am so optimistic, I see many good things about the players but I didn’t expect in a short time playing many good things”. If we can replicate last season in the Olympic stadium then it’ll be great, but there were some great results against top opposition that will be hard to replicate. They will control the game and although the West Ham defense will put up a fight we won’t have the ball for long enough to really stamp ourselves on the game.
