It felt like the night Manchester City\u2019s hopes of catching Arsenal in the Premier League title race were extinguished.<\/p>\n
Pep Guardiola\u2019s team began the evening at West Ham 10 points adrift of their London rivals, courtesy of the latter\u2019s dramatic late win over Everton, but despite taking the lead through Bernardo Silva, Konstantinos Mavropanos headed in an equaliser just four minutes later, and City could not find another response.<\/p>\n
Guardiola had told reporters before the game that \u201cif we drop points it will be over\u201d, and there is no doubt that a first title since 2004 is now firmly within Arsenal\u2019s grasp.<\/p>\n
Our writers Sam Lee and Anantaajith Raghuraman analyse the big talking points.<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/14175942\/West_Ham_vs_Man_City.png\")
<\/p>\n
Is the title now Arsenal\u2019s?<\/b><\/h2>\n
There is a lot of football to be played yet, but it does look increasingly unlikely that City are going to overhaul Arsenal, even if they do play the north Londoners at home next month.<\/p>\n
After Arsenal got a dramatic late win in the slightly earlier kick-off, City just had to win at the London Stadium, but despite pushing and pushing throughout the second half, making a variety of tactical changes to try to open up their hosts and hitting the crossbar late on, they could not find a winner.<\/p>\n
Their night was summed up when Marc Guehi spooned a chance over from six yards deep into stoppage time, after Mavropanos had blocked on the line from Nico O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/14174616\/GettyImages-2266525492-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n Pep Guardiola, banned from the touchline, spent most of the evening on his phone to his coaches (Richard Pelham\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The points gap is now nine, with City having a game in hand. If they were to win that game in hand and beat Arsenal, then the gap would be only three, but the problem with that thinking is that there are a lot of other matches to be played and City\u2019s stuttering form does not suggest that they have enough victories in them, even if Arsenal do drop points as they most likely will somewhere along the line.<\/p>\n There are ups and downs to come, but City\u2019s task became significantly harder here.<\/p>\n Sam Lee<\/em><\/p>\n West Ham have historically been Erling Haaland\u2019s favourite English opponent, with the striker scoring 11 times in seven games against them. But he failed to score for the fourth game in succession across all competitions.<\/p>\n City\u2019s initial setup to start the game saw Haaland share striking responsibilities with Omar Marmoush in a 4-2-2-2 formation. The narrow setup did not work against West Ham\u2019s organised 5-4-1 out of possession, with City slow on the ball until the move that led to Bernardo\u2019s opener.<\/p>\n City shifted to a flatter 4-4-2 in the second half, pushing Haaland from the right to the left up front. Antoine Semenyo, having played behind the front two in the first half, moved to the left wing. On occasion, the formation allowed Haaland to drop deep and link play, too, but it still did not get him too many chances to trouble Mads Hermansen.<\/p>\n \n Haaland is thwarted at the London Stadium (Richard Pelham\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Rayan Cherki\u2019s introduction meant Haaland could go back to playing off the defender\u2019s shoulder. Cherki almost instantly set up the Norway international for a chance in behind, which Hermansen saved well.<\/p>\n Another substitute, Jeremy Doku, also set Haaland up later in the half with a cutback from the left, but he snatched at the chance and sent it wide.<\/p>\n Late in the game, he seemed to hurt himself attacking a cross, labouring to get up. After failing to get a decent connection on another cross, he slapped the turf, summing up a night of frustration that he and City have experienced too often for their own good this season.<\/p>\n Bernardo may have told somebody \u2014 allegedly Phil Foden, according to broadcaster TNT Sport \u2014 that he meant his impudent dink for City\u2019s first goal, but his body language betrays him.<\/p>\n The little sheepish smirk that followed is not the expression of a man who has pulled off a piece of inspired brilliance by design.<\/p>\n The goal came after City\u2019s first passage of play with a bit of zip to it, and it got Bernardo into the perfect position near the byline to stand up a cross to the far post for Haaland \u2014 another bit of body language: when he looked up to pick a target, he only had eyes for Haaland.<\/p>\n It seemed like a classic case of Silva not wrapping his foot around the ball properly, meaning it came off at a different angle and outfoxed Hermansen in goal, looping into the far corner despite the best efforts of El Hadji Malick Diouf on the line.<\/p>\n Sam Lee<\/em><\/p>\n The City manager insisted the title race was still alive despite his remarks on Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, it\u2019s not over,\u201d he told TNT. \u201cWe didn\u2019t lose. We continue. We have an incredible team spirit and we fought after an incredible amount of effort in Madrid, the result and how we play.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst, we have more control for the shape, for the quality of the players, and we put energy in the second half with incredible talent players. The last two games, nothing for us.<\/p>\n \u201cWe played much, much better. Not just the stats, the feelings. We are an incredible team. We play so good. The players guide and go, until the end, we continue.\u201d<\/p>\n Tuesday, March 17:<\/strong> Real Madrid (Home), Champions League round-of-16 second leg, 8pm UK, 4pm ET<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It felt like the night Manchester City\u2019s hopes of catching Arsenal in the Premier League title race were extinguished. Pep Guardiola\u2019s team began the evening at West Ham 10 points … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why did Haaland struggle again?<\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/14181059\/Erling-Haaland_dashboard_West-Ham.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/14174742\/GettyImages-2266527266-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDid Silva mean his goal?<\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/14165250\/Screenshot-2026-03-14-at-20.44.31.png\")
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![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/14165312\/Screenshot-2026-03-14-at-20.44.57.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat did Guardiola say?<\/h2>\n
What next for City?<\/h2>\n