Come the final day of the Premier League campaign nine months from now, this defeat by Manchester City is unlikely to stand out as a season defining result for West Ham.
But for the division and English football more broadly, it may just prove a highly significant one.
In the context of this season, for sure, should Erling Haaland’s goals fire City to the defence of their title. Already, after one round of fixtures, they have opened up an advantage over most likely challengers Liverpool that is greater than the fine margin between the two brilliant sides after 38 last term.
Beyond that, who knows? Might the Norwegian’s first Premier League goal here, a penalty won and then confidently converted, before long be replayed at the start of a Hundred Club montage? Might the second, a cool finish after romping clear of the back-line to latch onto a perfect Kevin De Bruyne pass, become the trademark of the first truly great centre-forward career to get under way in the Premier League since the rather less telegraphed emergence of Harry Kane?
Such talk is, of course, premature; the kind of lurch toward an extreme that Pep Guardiola was referring to when he claimed Haaland had gone from potential Premier League bust to the next Alan Shearer or Thierry Henry in the space of a week.
Still, if this is just the start, then it is only natural to wonder what comes next. We are, after all, dealing with a signing accompanied by near unprecedented hype, which Guardiola himself did not exactly do a great deal to quell when asked about the comparison between his new leading man and the first of his managerial career, Lionel Messi.
“It’s good, I like it,” the City boss said. “I was fortunate as a manager to be with Messi, and if he scored two, he wanted three. If he scored three, he wanted four, and if he got four, he wanted five.
“The top goalscorers, the strikers, they are never satisfied, they are always hungry, starving, they always want more and more.”
Guardiola, likewise, has grander plans for his £51million addition. The Spaniard is an obsessive coach, hardly known for resting on any laurels, and not content with the 22-year-old’s status as the most prolific forward of this young generation, is already plotting the next phase of his evolution, which feels a particularly apt term for a player with superhuman ability.
“He’s a guy with incredible talent, a scorer of goals,” Guardiola said. “But we would like to add something more to his game to be a better player. Not just a guy who scores goals and that’s why we want to try to give everything to him to be a better player.”
If Haaland is up and running, though, then West Ham most certainly are not. They briefly looked set to defy a spluttering, disjointed pre-season when flying out of the traps and going close through Michail Antonio’s header but City soon took control and never relinquished it, enjoying 82 per cent of the ball in the first-half.
It had not come with any great penetration until Alphonse Areola, on as a substitute for the injured Lukasz Fabianski, rushed out too eagerly and gave Haaland the chance to open his account by wiping the former Borussia Dortmund man out.
“The way he took the ball to take the penalty, I said, ‘Oh, I like it.’” Guardiola added. “I think if someone were to take this ball, he would have punched his team-mates in the face. I’m pretty sure of that, and that is a good sign.”
Only with the lift of the arrival of new signing Gianluca Scamacca from the bench did the Hammers briefly threaten a leveller after the break, but Haaland had struck again before that flicker could turn into any sustained pressure and effectively ended the contest with 25 minutes to play.
David Moyes needs his new West Ham signings up to speed quickly and more must follow
It is little surprise that the biggest positive David Moyes could find at full-time was that his side “hung in, stuck at it against a team which completely outplayed us”. A starker scoreline might have proved damaging, but a two-goal defeat to the champions offers little to dwell on beyond the confirmation of what Moyes already knew: he needs his new signings up to speed quickly and needs more to follow.
It will be this Sunday, with a trip to the City Ground, a meeting with Nottingham Forest, that West Ham’s season begins in earnest. Already, Haaland’s has lift-off.
