West Ham's woeful run of opening day fixtures in the Premier League continued as they were thrashed 5-0 at home to champions Manchester City on Saturday.
The Hammers have now lost their last four opening fixtures to a top flight season, clocking up a horrendous aggregate score of 13-0 in their last three.
13-0.
That's bad.
Their hopes of securing a shock win over City were short lived, as they fell to a second-half demolition job. Pep Guardiola's men were rampant, with Raheem Sterling in his imperious best form. His link up play with Gabriel Jesus was excellent and West Ham had no reply for the superior fire power of the visitors.
For their part, West Ham did force City goalkeeper Ederson into a smart double save to keep out Javier Hernandez's effort and Manuel Lanzini's follow up. However they will be frustrated that they could not take advantage of Manchester City's slow start to this match.
You have to go back to 2015, when the Hammers beat Arsenal in their own back yard 2-0, for the last time West Ham managed an opening day victory. Since then their form has been pretty grim.
A 2-1 defeat to Chelsea, was followed up by back-to-back 4-0 away defeats at Manchester United and Liverpool respectively, before today's humbling to the defending champions. Manuel Pellegrini won't need telling that any team could lose four in row to the Premier League's best teams, but the Chilean will no doubt be disappointed by the gulf in class between the two teams today.
West Ham will have the chance to bounce back immediately from this defeat with their first away trip of the season, at Brighton, next weekend as they look for their first Premier League points of the season.
Source : 90min