How West Ham set up perfectly to defend against Manchester City

West Ham won a well-earned point against Manchester City on Saturday. So much of that had to do with David Moyes’ defensive set up against the citizens.

For the first time at the London Stadium, Manchester City failed to come away with all three points. Leading West Ham by an outrageous 22-1 aggregate score in all matches at the ground. Pep Guardiola was probably hoping for more of the same to ease his concerns around the club’s poor form. But Moyes played a little with the shape to counter City’s attacking strength and was helped by the absence of Phil Foden or Kevin De Bruyne.

Three centre-backs and two wingbacks has been working for David Moyes as West Ham have overcome a difficult stretch of games to sit in the top half of the table. Usually, this would see a pretty even defensive set up, with it turning into a flat 5-4-1 when the opponent was pressuring the defence. But against City, there were two noticeable changes in the first half.

First of all, with Riyad Mahrez the only attacked of note sticking to the wing on the City right, Moyes tried to cut him out of the game. In the first 25 minutes Aaron Cresswell and Arthur Masuaku wouldn’t sit close to him, but Cresswell inside him and Masuaku further up, taking out the simple pass.

The first thing this did is stopped City being able to pass the ball into Mahrez’s feet simply, and because Kyle Walker and Bernardo Silva both favour sitting more centrally now, it isolated Mahrez from releasing the ball quickly.

Secondly, this allowed Pablo Fornals to take a more central role defensively, sitting in front of Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek to kill the space for a deep playmaker. With Foden and De Bruyne on the bench, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan and Rodri all struggled for central space because of the midfield triangle killing that area.

City were forced to try and rely on crosses into the box with Sergio Aguero fighting off three centrebacks to try and win the ball. Moyes accepted that as a lesser evil, even though João Cancelo frequently had the beating of Vladamir Coufal on the West Ham right to get crosses in.

Obviously, a lot of this changed when Foden came on, and I don’t think we would have seen much of the lopsided formation if he or De Buyne had started. They have the ability to float in between the lines and draw players out of position unlike many others in the league, but Moyes assessed the situation and decided to go with it in order to nullify the team we faced.

As it was it only took Foden 7 minutes to capitalise on the uncertainty of the gap between wide centreback, wingback and defensive midfielder to get his chance to score. But given the attacking riches at City’s disposal, West Ham did excessively well to minimise their genuine scoring chances.

As long as Moyes continues to adapt to who’s in front of the side, there’s no reason West Ham can’t have a successful season.