Manchester City (a)
Stuck in the middleSame team as Burnley, but then Bernard somehow manages to get a cut on his leg and can’t play.. Tom Davies replaced him in the starting 11 and played from the left of a midfield 3.
Like Ian Wright, Les Ferdinand, Danny Ings & that forever rat Ian Rush, Gabriel Jesus always scores against us. Always! From a first half dominated by VAR incidents that show the positives and negatives it was great to go in 0-0.
There was a clear off side in the build up to Foden’s goal, Positive! Mahrez was offside before he went down in the box when challenged by Digne, flag went up, ref blew the whistle. So why check for a penalty if the player was offside? Negative! When you look at some of the goals disallowed in the PL today it’s no-wonder there are calls for it to be scrapped.
Anyway the first half demonstrated where Don Carlo has his work cut out, he and we already know our midfield is a game by game patch up. But today showed that against workman like teams such as Burnley and Newcastle it’s ok, but against a world class pairing in Gundogan and De Bruyne you’ll get exposed, cut to pieces and we did. We got away with playing terribly. Richarlison, Sigurdsson and DCL were hardly in the game, every ball played through midfield got cut out and sent straight through to Mahrez or Foden to run at our back 3. Halftime 0-0
No changes and again we’re struggling in midfield, Coleman running back towards Pickford with the ball at his feet and a defender in chase scares the life out of me, and we did it so often in this game due to there being no outlet. Delph to his credit shows every time, and like in the second half at Newcastle relieved the strain on the defence, but his other 2 partners were having as poor a game as they’ve had in the recent upturn.
Once Jesus had squirmed past Mina and shaped a curler passed Holgate then Pickford, just compounded the issue Ancelotti has. Gundogan’s through ball was unopposed and that was 1-0.
It was hard to see how Everton could get back into the game, no out ball and nothing sticking upfront despite DCL’s best efforts to get down the sides of Garcia and Fernandinho.
Jesus’s second was a great passing move by City, and eventually in past Pickford’s near post. Jesus is pure class, he had Mina on the back foot all game and left Holgate to pretty much deal with everything else and in truth he struggled.
Sigurdsson who’d been terrible, never facing Bravo’s goal when he had the ball was replaced, and not long after so was Coleman. Walcott on the right with Richarlison going left, Moise Kean on and 4-4-2. Instantly we looked balanced and we looked a lot more threatening. DCL starting to knock defenders about, Kean closing down and Richarlison cutting inside. Then, after a mistake by Bravo, Kean has a shot half blocked and the ball is played by Walcott across the face of goal for Richarlison to touch in. 2-1, can we come back?
Ultimately no we couldn’t, Jesus hit the post to deny himself a hat-trick and we had a few set pieces that we threatened with. Why on earth Walcott took the corner at the end of the game is beyond me..Surely it should have been an inswinger looking for a charging Mina?
City, even without Aguero, Sterling and Silva are a class act, their starting midfield 3 cost over £130m. They controlled the game. Against Newcastle and Burnley we were able to dictate the play, because we had a better midfield. This is where the game was won and lost today.
So it’s the first roadblock we encounter under Ancelotti, but is it really a significant one? I’d say no.
I’m disappointed whenever we lose, but when your outclassed, it’s different to being out worked.
Injuries have taken their toll on this squad, this is the 3rd game in 7 days, and a lot of the players had just ran out of steam. In our ‘horrific fixture’ schedule in December we took 11pts when few gave us a chance. 1 defeat in 7 and now we have a chance to exercise a multitude of demons on Sunday.
Carlo has been here for less than 2 weeks and we look a completely different proposition. After the FA cup game on Sunday everything reverts to a form of normality regarding the league fixtures and the chance for the manager to really have a look at the players and make a decision as to who or what he may need to bring in during this transfer window.
UTFT 💙
