TOTAL FOOTBALL
Fluid, adaptable, a joy to watch. Pep’s team have surely won the title after 20th win in a row. Can they now break world record?
DEFEATS are like distant spectres for Manchester City now. Even draws are half-forgotten impostors. They are trespassers banished long ago, unwelcome interlopers who fled elsewhere and have never come back. West Ham offered reminders of what resistance feels like but they were vanquished in the end. For Pep Guardiola’s side, anything other than victory is another country visited long ago.
This win over a West Ham side that is one of the form teams in the Premier League was City’s 20th straight win and took them 13 points clear of Manchester United, their nearest challengers, at the top of the table. The fact they conceded a goal at home was a collector’s item but it will offer cold comfort to the chasing pack.
City are champions- elect and, even if Guardiola will regard this kind of talk as irrelevant, other observers now have their attention fixed on records that City are approaching. The world record for the number of consecutive victories by a top-flight team stands at 26, set by the Ajax of Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens and Johnny Rep in 1971-72. It is an ambitious mark but it is starting to look as if it is within City’s compass.
It is a measure of the fact that City are playing something like total football that both their goals against David Moyes’ side were scored by t heir centre- backs, Ruben Dias and John Stones. City were far from at their best but they were still bewitching in spells. Their play is so fluid, their players so adaptable, their movement such a blur, t heir t echnique under pressure so assured, that they are a joy to watch.
West Ham are a good side, too, and they did not make it easy for the leaders. Moyes’ team had won seven of their nine league games this year and deserve their place in the top four. Jesse Lingard, on loan from United, was superb again. So was Declan Rice. They made City work hard for their win but, like so many before them, they could not quite do enough to stop them.
‘ After 10 to 15 minutes today,’ Guardiola said later, ‘we realised we are not going to paint anything beautiful.’ But City still did enough and they have already compiled the longest competitive winning streak in history by an English top-flight team.
Fourteen of those 20 successive victories have come in the league, which means they are also approaching the domestic record ord of 18 consecutive league wins, s, which they already share with the Liverpool title- winning side of last season. Liverpool, by the way, now languish 22 points adrift of City.
Guardiola had made seven changes from the team that beat Borussia Monchengladbach in the Champions League e on Wednesday but, despite their eir domination of possession, it was West Ham who caused the first moment of alarm in either penalty area.
A shot from Lingard ballooned into the air off Stones. Tomas Soucek met it at the back post and headed it across goal and, when Mic hail Antonio challenged Ederson in the air, the ball broke loose. It fell to Lingard but his shot was blocked, again, by Stones.
City were impressively assured in possession but with Aguero making his first Premier League start since the last time City played West Ham, on October 24, and Kevin De Bruyne also feeling his way back from injury, it was not surprising they lacked some initial sharpness in the final third. De Bruyne, the master craftsman, even shanked an attempted pass deep into touch.
But with half an hour gone, De Bruyne announced his return in style. He took the ball on his chest on the right touchline and cut inside on to his left foot before sending a raking cross sailing over the heads of West Ham’s centre-halves for Dias to rise at the back post. Darren Randolph got his left hand to it but could not keep it out. The arrival of Dias h has helped to effe effect a big improvement in City’s defence this season. This was his first City goal.
It felt like a curiously cheap goal for a team as well organised and disciplined as West Ham to concede but it is better to focus on the quality of the pass. There is a reason why De Bruyne is regarded as one of the best players in the world and i t was good t o be reminded of it. He has the ability to make good defences look negligent.
West Ham did not fold, though. Rice continued to work tirelessly in midfield, breaking up play and prompting attacks and Lingard looked full of confidence and verve. Even if City had been the better team, the visitors were good enough to hang in there. Antonio missed a good chance to level when he hit the base of a post but then he atoned for the miss when West Ham equalised three minutes before half time.
Aguero gave the ball away just inside the half way line and West Ham worked it wide to Vladimir Coufal as he overlapped down the right. Coufal pulled his cross back into the path of Lingard, who has made such a positive impression since his arrival on loan from United and, when he clipped it goalwards, Antonio was lurking to prod it over the line.
It was the first time City had conceded a goal at home since Dias put through his own net in the draw with West Brom on December 15, which was also the last time they failed to win. It was also the first goal City had conceded at home this season while Stones has played. When you compile a winning streak like City’s, those types of statistics just keep on coming.
City nearly took the lead again just before the hour when Kyle Walker burst out of defence and drilled a pass out to De Bruyne on the left. De Bruyne leapt over a wild, lunging challenge from Issa
Diop, sprinted to the byline and tried to cut the ball back for Aguero. Aguero’s radar is not quite in fully working order again yet and he misread the pass, which rolled across goal.
Aguero had struggled with the pace of the game and he was substituted soon after. Phil Foden came on for Ferran Torres a couple of minutes after that. Guardiola acknowledged City had to step things up. The game was drifting but straight away the substitutions changed the mood. Midway through the half, City went ahead again.
West Ham failed to clear a corner from the left and the ball was worked back to Riyad Mahrez on the flank of the visitors’ penalty area. Mahrez played a simple pass into the box to Stones, who took it first time and swept it past the despairing right hand of Rudolph.
The visitors stayed in the game and gave City one last scare deep into time added on when Diop’s header went across the face of goal, just too far in front of Soucek for him to apply the finishing touch. It was cl ose but City’s winning machine marches on.