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Slaven Bilic compares winning to 'visiting a pub that is full of women' after West Ham see off Manchester City
Man City1 - 2West Ham
West Ham won away again with an assured 2-1 victory, although an excitable Bilic has nevertheless cooled talk of a top four finish
With a ready quip, an effervescent touchline demeanour and a passion for his club that seems to seep from every pore, Slaven Bilic is rapidly emerging as one of the more engaging and agreeable personalities of the season.
The only question surrounding the West Ham United manager as his team continued their devastating and unexpected start to the season is at what point we, and Bilic himself, need to start taking him and his club’s abilities seriously.
Impressive in victory at Arsenal and Liverpool and now the first team in five months and 12 league games to inflict defeat upon Manchester City. Three such notable away scalps surely promote West Ham from early season curiosities into genuine players in the upper reaches of the division even if Bilic refuses to analyse his team’s full potential.
“Yeah, yeah. Of course I like it when we are winning,” Bilic said. “Of course it is brilliant! It is like when you come to a pub that is full of women! You will like it!
“I don’t play the targets down, seriously. Nobody is saying we are going to finish fourth. What does 'targets’ mean? What are 'targets?’ Targets are for a club like Man United, all my targets are about trying to improve us day in, day out. Where is that going to take us? I don’t know.”
Although, as his less quotable opposite number Manuel Pellegrini was quick to point out, there are still 96 points to play for in the Premier League season, a glance at the current league table, especially in the away columns, justified asking Bilic whether a top-four finish was realistic.
“Hopefully! Hopefully!” he said. “But you would be the first one to say before the season that this would be impossible. But still, unfortunately, just six games have gone. I would love this to be zero games [remaining] but we have to maintain, we have to improve.”
City, vulnerable at the back without the injured Vincent Kompany, still boasted a centre-half pairing that cost £61 million but goals inside the opening half-hour were conceded far too easily to Victor Moses and Diafra Sakho. After full debutant Kevin De Bruyne scored impressively just before the interval, City’s dominance was near total but, without David Silva who had injured his calf in the warm-up, the leaders lacked guile and the final pass.
“Obviously David is a very good player and very important for this team but I think the squad is so strong you can just put a player like [Jesús] Navas in,” said De Bruyne.
“In the second half we put them under a lot of pressure, we tried to score goals. That was the only thing we didn’t do. These games happen. When they won the first five games maybe the ball went easily into the net. You’ll have games when it’s more difficult.”
Meanwhile, the only concern for the victors appears likely to be dealing with the inflated weight of expectation that will follow this latest away performance. Bilic may not be ready to agree but the visiting supporters had no hesitation in taunting their hosts with chants of “We’re going to win the league.”
“Typical West Ham fans. We just take one game as it comes,” the defender James Tomkins said. “But City are title contenders and we’ve beaten them. The manager just sends us out telling us we are good players, he gives us the confidence to go and play. He gives us confidence leading into games and that is massive. On the touchline it’s almost like he’s playing. You can tell how much he cares, how he wants to do well. He makes us believe we can do better. The gaffer has been really good for us. Teams are going to fear us now. They’ll be looking at these results and worrying.”
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