Spot-on Aguero keeps pressure up as City endure Cup hangover

AFTER a gruelling 120 minutes in the Carabao Cup final against Chelsea on Sunday, there was always a chance this would be a hard night’s work for Manchester City.

It certainly turned out that way and, in the end, the champions required a lenient referee and the brilliance of Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling from the substitutes’ bench to help them over the line.

Manuel Pellegrini, the West Ham manager, would have loved to get one over the man who took his job at City but Pep Guardiola ultimately ruined the Chilean’s hopes of a memorable first return to the Etihad Stadium and it is as you were at the top of the Premier League.

Sergio Aguero’s penalty, his 25th goal of a season, proved decisive but it is fair to say Stuart Attwell will not be on Jurgen Klopp’s Christmas card list. Bernardo won the spot-kick only a minute after his introduction but the push from Felipe Anderson on the City playmaker was best filed under the category “minimal contact”.

Dogged

City, in truth, dominated but West Ham were dogged and it was only with the arrival of Bernardo and Sterling that Guardiola’s men roused themselves.

It takes a brave manager to throw in a 19-year-old for his debut away to the free-scoring champions and then ask him to play out of position, but Pellegrini obviously thinks a lot of Ben Johnson. It quickly became apparent that City were going to try to target him.

In that respect, Johnson must have been grateful he was up against Riyad Mahrez from the start and not Sterling. Mahrez’s first half was best summed up by the frequent daggers he was shot by Kevin De Bruyne.

David Silva hooked a shot against a post yet the interval arrived with the game goalless, West Ham’s central pairing of Issa Diop and Angelo Ogbonna having excelled. The uplift from Sterling and Bernardo was immediate.

Bernardo had only been on the pitch a minute when he won a soft penalty that was coolly dispatched by Aguero. There was a nudge but the Portuguese needed no invitation to tumble.

Johnson would not last much longer, his work curtailed by a tight muscle, and his replacement, the former City defender Pablo Zabaleta, was given a hero’s welcome. He was walking into a siege at that stage, though. But the second goal never came as City held on. (© Daily Telegraph, London)