David Moyes admitted West Ham simply couldn't cope with Manchester City's new tactic in their Premier League opener, as they'd never seen the Blues use it before.
Barring a couple of periods of pressure from West Ham, City controlled proceedings at the London Stadium, helped in a large part by full-backs Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo, both operating as inverted full-backs to join Rodri as a midfield three.
City have perfected using one inverted full-back in the last two years, but Moyes said West Ham were helpless to combat both Walker and Cancelo playing centrally as they simply weren't expecting it.
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"It was really different, they played really well," Moyes said of City's performance.
"They changed from last year when we played them a few months ago, we gave them a better game. Tactically they changed, Walker and Cancelo either side of Rodri, they played with no full-backs. We found it hard to cope with them in the middle of the pitch and found it difficult to cope when they got it wide.
"Today, tactically they were much better. We hadn't prepared for that because we hadn't really seen it but was really difficult tactically to deal with it."
Moyes saw Erling Haaland score twice on his Premier League debut, although he put City's victory down to the full-back tactic as much as the addition of Haaland to the Blues line-up.
He said: "I didn't say they were different because of Haaland, I said they were different because of where they played both their full-backs playing either side of Rodri. It caused us a different problem, they outnumbered in midfield, we couldn't get on the ball.
"When we brought players in to cope they played to [Jack] Grealish or [Phil] Foden and got some width.
"Over the years they've always brought one full-back in, [Oleksandr] Zinchenko last year, the two of them played there today and outnumbered us. Tactically they were good.
"Today the talk should be about City. They played well and we didn't compete as well as we competed against them last [season]."
"I'd love to reduce [City's possession]. Have you got an idea? You think we don't work on that, pressing high up? We tried to do it. We couldn't get near them today. I hope the next time we play them we can do better but today we weren't."
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