Manchester City vs West Ham match report: Sergio Aguero seals win after James Collins own goal as David Silva is stretchered off

Manchester City 2 West Ham 0

Manchester City players celebrate going 1-0 up (GETTY IMAGES)

There is a manifest sense of industry at Manchester City’s stadium – the white cranes, spectacular against a blue sky, are gradually pulling a glass-fronted new stand extension into place. But making headway with the football is a far heavier lifting job. A welcome win against West Ham eases a little of the doubt about City’s future Champions League status but the uncertainty prevails.

The value of the victory, which takes Manuel Pellegrini’s team seven points clear of fifth-placed Liverpool with one game fewer to play, cannot be understated because the club cannot afford to live without their European income. But the anxiety attached to the sight of David Silva being carried on a stretcher from the field in an oxygen mask and neck brace just beyond the hour revealed a fragile state of mind.

Silva last night said that the “tests have gone well” but there are doubts about possible injury to his cheekbone and collarbone. It was not what City wanted, a week after Vincent Kompany’s season ended prematurely.

Silva is the man whom Pellegrini speaks privately of having the “X-factor”. He is City’s player of the season by a distance and there is no doubt that the manager values him above all others in his squad. He is needed. City’s five game run-in (a trip to White Hart Lane and the visit of Southampton both feature) is not entirely flat.

The game’s controversy hinged on whether the Senegalese Cheikhou Kouyaté should have been sent off for the elbow to Silva’s face which resulted in medical staff treating the player for eight minutes, before he was carried off the pitch.

Sky Sports’ Niall Quinn, a former City striker, said the challenge was indefensible, though that did not tally with the experience of watching it in real time. “I always think that the player doesn’t want to make damage to another player,” said Pellegrini, one of the most gracious of his profession in these situations. “The referee was so near and he decided it was unintentional. I don’t believe a player wants to make that damage to another mate.”

West Ham manager Sam Allardyce argued his player’s case more forcefully. “Accidental,” he said. “It was innocuous. I didn’t think it was a foul. I just had a look now. Everybody thinks it is more serious attack from Cheikhou than it was. It wasn’t deliberate at all…”

Allardyce had far deeper preoccupations, including the question of how a side who were fourth in October, after beating City 2-1 at Upton Park, could look so demotivated and feckless in possession for the first half-hour. They casually surrendered the ball in the game’s early stages, with Aaron Cresswell and Enner Valencia especially poor. They are averaging less than a point a game, having commanded one-and-a-half per game in the first half of the season.

Sergio Aguero completes a fine move to score City's second (GETTY IMAGES)

City’s two goals – both offered up on a plate – were the epitome of what the opposition had been about. James Collins was the provider of the first, turning a poorly-struck Jesus Navas cross into perhaps the own goal of the season as the ball looped over goalkeeper Adrian and in off the underside of the bar.

Stewart Downing – who just did not look interested – served up the second when he sold Mark Noble short with a pass 20 minutes later. Yaya Touré slid into the arc of the ball, navigating it to Aguero, who accelerated past Collins, exchanged passes with Navas and struck home from close range. “One [mistake] was pretty bizarre and the other unexpected from a player as experienced as Stewart Downing,” reflected Allardyce, angry enough about a result which extends his side’s dismal spring to one win in 12 to identify the culprit.

Anaemic though the visiting side were, the intensity of some of City’s play deserves acknowledgement. There was a morbid fascination in looking for signs of players no longer motivated to deliver for Pellegrini, but no evidence of it. Aguero looked fully driven to prevent two successive defeats degenerating into a crisis. Eliaquim Mangala and Fernando offered signs of what City saw when they signed them. City’s stardust moment came five minutes after the interval, Touré measuring a disguised pass which Frank Lampard’s dummy allowed to run through to Aguero. Carl Jenkinson arrived just in time with a strong, precise challenge.

David Silva is treated after clashing with Kouyate (GETTY IMAGES)

Even Pellegrini admitted that Silva’s departure had affected the flow of City’s football. “The injury of David made distractions,” he said. Allardyce instigated a double change, bringing on Kevin Nolan and Matt Jarvis and giving Valencia a run at Aleksandr Kolarov rather than Pablo Zabaleta – who offered him precious little change all afternoon.

It made a difference. Valencia tiptoed around Martin Demichelis on the dead-ball line and cut back behind Mangala before shooting wide. Nolan seized a poor back pass from Navas but could not beat Joe Hart. These were reminders of the vulnerabilities in City. They would have beaten a side as poor as this by a far more substantial margin last season.

Pellegrini looked relieved, despite that. “We come from two defeats in a row and always when one is a [Manchester] derby it is worse,” he said. “It was important to be a consistent team. We are a consistent team. In other games we play [well for] minutes. Today I think we played [well] the whole game.”

He refused to respond last night to the latest comments by Touré’s agent Dimitri Seluk who, a few months after proposing that his man wanted to be City’s director of football, denigrated the club’s executives for signing players they didn’t use and criticised the Chilean. “He’s a good coach, but a weak manager,” Seluk said. “He won the title with the team left behind by Roberto Mancini.”

Pellegrini replied to say that he had “no comments” to make. But there can be no disguising that City are in a holding position, waiting to see what transpires, and whether they can afford to hold for on one more season with this manager before Pep Guardiola becomes free. Such is the nature of Manchester City, a club struggle to build in the footballing sense.