They were rattled briefly, then Pep Guardiola’s team returned for the second half with the galaxy re-aligned around them to get on with breaking the resolve of West Ham until eventually it was not even difficult anymore.
Erling Haaland missed all sorts of chances – open goals, flying volleys – and then, with four minutes, he stopped all that and buried one with his right foot. It felt like it was always going to end like this in spite of West Ham’s admirable intent to have a bit of a go. By the final whistle the James Ward-Prowse header that had opened it all up, and his joyful interrupted golf swing that followed, felt a long time ago.
David Moyes’s team had been good in the first half and that Ward-Prowse goal had come among some confident passing that felt surreal in its similarity to what one might expect of City. There was some well-meaning stadium announcer badinage about West Ham being the true champions of Europe, a point he felt so strongly about that he said it more than once. Yet the City machine bulldozes through it all in the end. This is five wins from five games.
Their manager was back on the bench after his absence during recovery from back surgery and he selected the Belgian winger Jeremy Doku on the left, where he had a productive afternoon. The 21-year-old, making just his second City appearance, was rather too slow in the build-up to West Ham’s goal. But he was electric in attack and when at last his opposing full-back Vladimir Coufal was substituted with the game settled you did wonder why he had been left to marshal Doku for so long.
The Belgian left the West Ham man with blood well and truly twisted. Doku’s goal after 41 seconds of the second half, the equaliser, was a signal as to how things would go after the break. He and Josko Gvardiol looked for the most part at home in this team. So the wheel turns and another iteration of English football’s current great power is born again.
They dominated the second half. West Ham did well to hold out until 76 minutes when Julian Alvarez scooped a return ball over the top to Bernardo Silva and he leapt to nudge it past Alphonse Areola. The West Ham goalkeeper was a little too slow to come out, although he had a good game. No-one can stop them all.
The home side had made it a game. There were moments from Lucas Paqueta, who nicked a ball off Rodri in the second half and sent Michail Antonio through on what turned out to be a rather futile run at goal. There were other fleeting chances but West Ham eventually found themselves forced backwards to the point of no return.
The West Ham goal on 36 minutes had come from Doku’s loose touch. It bounced off his knee to Coufal who exchanged passes with Jarrod Bowen and was off before Doku reacted. The full-back had plenty of time to pick out Ward-Prowse at the back post.
The Haaland misses – the first from the cross of Gvardiol, the second from another played in by Doku – were a treat for the home support. But even they knew it could not last and so he would eventually have his goal.
