New Hammers skipper Kurt Zouma reckons the Hammers made life is difficult for Manchester City as the league leaders did for us.
But like most of the fans he believes the Hammers were killed off with the early second half when probable man of the match Doku scored just 43 second adter the restart.
Captain Zouma saw James Ward-Prowse put the Hammers ahead in the first half before City hiot back with that killer strike before Bernardo Silva and Erling Haaland grabbed one aopuece tio take the points back to the Etihad,
Zouma told whufc.com.“It was a tough game. They made it very tough for us and we made it tough for them. I think it was a very tense game and, obviously, little mistakes made the difference.
” It’s eleven versus eleven and we knew we could hurt them. We had a few chances where we could have scored one or two more goals, but against the top teams the little details make the difference. They were better at those details in this game.
“The beginning of the second half was the killer for us, I would say. Conceding straight away, after just a few seconds in the second half, it feels bad. We tried to stay in the game and gave our all, but it wasn’t meant to be today.”
No one can be unduly disappointed as the Hammers were quite outstanding at times but in the end the first defeat of the season coincided with us being behind in a game.
Zouma did point out several positives which the team can take into the remainder of a busy September.
He continued: “We were so good in the first half, so solid. On the ball, we kept it and hurt them. We moved it quickly and we got around them, In the first half, we were very, very good. The second half we started badly, conceded straight away, but we need to take the positives out of it and move onto the next game.
“We have a top team. The team is playing so well at the minute. We’ve started the season well and this is our first defeat. It was against a top team who are playing well at the minute too, so we need to move on. We can hurt any team and we need to stay on top of that.”
The support of the home crowd at London Stadium showed the delight in the effort from the home side, and the French defender has confidence going forward.