Bilic hails Moses, Sakho’s impact at West Ham

West Ham needed only six minutes to take the lead, with Victor Moses firing in from long range as City conceded its first league goal of the campaign.

After the match, Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini said his side played “too rushed” in the second half, which was one of the reasons City failed to find an equalizer against West Ham. Even considering the inevitable regression to the mean for City, at this stage it’s tricky to see anyone else being better than them over the season. In the second half, City created, they pressed us and they were the better team, to be fair, and if they had equalised it would have been deserved.

Slaven Bilic’s men – third in the Premier League on the back of three consecutive victories – visit fourth-placed Leicester on Tuesday, and have a 100 per cent record on the road in domestic fixtures this term.

You need to score to win.

West Ham United’s Diafra Sakho, centre right, scores past… “It is always hard to play against any Premier League team – everyone has very good players”, Pellegrini said.

Many West Ham fans might have been forgiven for fearing the worst when the fixture computer handed their team trips to Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City in their opening three away games.

He said: “We never believed that because we won five games we were the champions of the Premier League“.

Any dreams Arsenal may have had of winning at Chelsea for the first time for four years were ended when Kurt Zouma, 20, who replaced dropped 34-year-old skipper John Terry, headed Chelsea ahead after 53 minutes with his first goal for the club.

He told Sky Sports: “We knew we were going to come up against it. They haven’t conceded a goal”.

Bilic was clearly delighted by yet another eye-catching victory although he jokingly bristled at suggestions that such success was now so common place that it did not represent a surprise.

“You’ve got no chance unless you sprint until the end of the game“.

Bilic has more options available to him now with striker Andy Carroll making his first appearance in seven months as a late substitute against Newcastle and deadline-day arrivals Nikica Jelavic and Michail Antonio yet to make their debuts. At half-time we were still confident we could change the game and we tried to put pressure on them.