West Ham 2 Manchester City 1: City leaving Eliaquim Mangala too exposed, says Sam Allardyce

West Ham boss has criticised Manchester City’s soft centre

Eliaquim Mangala of Manchester City (GETTY IMAGES)

Sam Allardyce has criticised Manchester City’s soft centre, claiming they have failed to protect their summer defensive signing, Eliaquim Mangala, and that West Ham United specifically targeted that area in his side’s 2-1 win.

Mangala produced another poor performance in what was just his fourth Premier League game since signing from Porto in August. Allardyce does not believe that it is the 23-year-old’s fault as he picked holes in the Premier League champions’ tactics.

“I think they leave him exposed,” Allardyce said. “He’s only just joined the Premier League. They don’t protect him. More and more you can get down the side of him, with the space that [left-back Gaël] Clichy leaves.

“Vincent Kompany is used to it, he’s been at this level for such a long time. This [Mangala] lad’s not. He’s finding his feet and, like I said, we made big strides down that left-hand side and we caused them lots of problems.

“Maybe there should have been a bit more protection for them from the other players – we could expose that.

“We all know that Manchester City play a certain way. They come away from home expecting to win and go and attack you. We’ve seen a lot this season those spaces they leave can be exploited by other teams. We exploited those brilliantly.”

The win, courtesy of goals from Morgan Amalfitano and Diafra Sakho, left West Ham just a point off City in fourth place, and put Manuel Pellegrini in very prickly form.

The City manager was unwilling to discuss his defensive problems or the increasing difficulties of defending the title, but insisted that his team were not suffering from extra pressure generated by the need to retain the trophy. “The pressure is to win the title [first, and] to retain the title,” he said. “My [own] pressure I think is the best for me.”

Kompany said City were not yet worried about the gap between themselves and leaders Chelsea, pointing to how they hauled back Manchester United in 2011-12.

“We have been eight points down with less games to go and still won the title,” he said. “We will win our games. But we have to gain the wins much faster. We need to play a little bit better.”

West Ham are looking increasingly potent in attack, but Allardyce was not getting too giddy about being in the top four and refused to set lofty new targets. “We said [a finish of] 10th or better [before the season began] and we are going to stick to that at this stage of the season. We are way ahead of that target in terms of what we are doing at the moment, which means if we do have a little off spell in terms of results that may go against us, then we have a few points if we subside and still finish 10th. If we don’t subside then who knows?

“It’s always about goalscorers in the end. You can organise your team to be solid and defensively organised and make a difference in the team, but your front men make a difference when they get the chance.

“That’s nine league games and 17 goals we have scored. If we can keep that ratio up... you do the maths.”