West Ham United manager David Moyes has said that he is only focused on the Hammers and not trying to help his former player Mikel Arteta.
The Hammers travel to face Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium this evening (Wednesday), with Moyes' men facing a tough test against Pep Guardiola's side, who have won their last 11 games in a row in domestic competitions.
City's recent run, which included a 4-1 victory against rivals Arsenal in their last home game, has seen them take the initiative in the Premier League title race, with Guardiola's side being one point behind the Gunners, but with two games in hand.
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One of those is against West Ham tonight and a win for City would move them back to the top of the table, after Arsenal went back above them last night (Tuesday) with a 3-1 victory against Chelsea.
A win for West Ham at the Etihad Stadium would see Moyes do Arteta and Arsenal a big favour and would keep the Gunners top of the table, but the Hammers boss says that helping his former Everton player out is not in his mind, with only four points separating West Ham in 15th from the bottom three.
"The only people I want to help at the moment is the team here and give the team the best chance they can to get a result," he said, when asked if he wanted to help his former player Arteta. "If that gets us something then so be it. You become incredibly selfish when you get to this point in football and especially at this time in the league.
"Mikel [Arteta] will always be an ex-player and a great guy who I worked with and I really enjoyed that. He’s had an unbelievable season. He really has. And still might prove to be a champion at the end, who knows? But we’re also up against a team who they’ve been to play and they know how difficult it is to go to [Manchester] City."
Winning the Premier League title this season would be a third success in a row for City, and a fifth title in six years in the English top flight, with Moyes admitting that the division is perhaps in danger of becoming predictable if Guardiola's men do win it again.
However, he says that all is not over for Arsenal in the title race, even though he has been full of praise for the Hammers' opponents and their manager Guardiola.
"A little bit," he said. "We are all finding it a bit difficult to take it back off Man City. It goes through phases. There was a period where Sir Alex [Ferguson] was in charge and Man United were dominating. But if you remember back a few years ago, it used to be very hard to win the league and then come back and win it the next year.
"That used to be the way it was, as while you were going on to win it the other teams were already getting prepared and strengthening, and let’s be fair, for three quarters of this season you may have said Man City don’t look like the favourites and we have to be careful talking about Man City being champions.
"I think Arsenal still have a great chance of pushing them. who knows what happens. But, recently we are beginning to see them [Manchester City] come really, really strong. They have an unbelievably good manager who has changed a lot of things around and a lot of people have taken so much from Pep [Guardiola].
"I think back to when he was under [Johan] Cruyff and what he must have picked up from arguably one of the best in the world. Pep, tactically, is fantastic. They have also had an awful lot of money to get the best players. You cannot take that away, but the praise could not be big enough because of the way he is changing football."
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