Slaven Bilic’s side have already recorded victories away at Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City this season, which has led to the Hammers now sitting as high as third in the Premier League.
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Pellegrini refused to use their absences as an excuse and, instead, criticised his team’s collective lack of focus which he said had also been punished in the midweek Uefa Champions League defeat against Juventus. “There will be ups and downs here at West Ham – this result is a major surprise and nine points from the first three away games sound like a dream, not a plan”. We have defended with concentration and intensity in our last two games and we conceded two easy goals’.
City were camped inside the Hammers half for virtually the entire second half, with Adrian denying the likes of Yaya Toure, Navas and Aguero before producing a brilliant save to push a Nicolas Otamendi header from a De Bruyne corner over his own bar on 85 minutes. It’s not so much that West Ham were very impressive against Newcastle on Monday (which carries with it the obvious caveat of it being against Newcastle), with Dimitri Payet and Victor Moses looking very good indeed, but they were excellent on the counter-attack.
Pellegrini was critical of his defending and lack of cutting edge.
Meanwhile, Nigeria striker Sylvester Igbonu scored a consolation goal for his Russian Federation club FC Ufa when they lost 4-1 at Terek Grozny in a league game, AfricanFootball.com reports.
West Ham United’s Diafra Sakho, centre right, scores past…
The Nigerian winger and the Senegalese hitman put an end to City’s 11-match winning run in the Premier League, as Yaya Touré and his teammates dropped their first points of the new campaign, africanFootball.com reports. I think they nearly fought themselves a little bit [against West Ham] and Pellegrini said it himself about the rush and the speed at which they tried to do things to try and get back in the game.
Unfortunately for City, club captain Vincent Kompany will be out against West Ham with a calf injury suffered in their Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Champions League loss against Juventus, but forward Sergio Agüero will be available, according to BBC Sport. You need not only to work, but you have no chance if you are not sprinting in the last minute of the game.
“After we conceded the goals, we played against the score, against time, against the rivals, against everybody, and that’s why I think we played too fast”.
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“We knew this would be a hard game because it was not luck that meant they beat Liverpool and Arsenal“.
