da dobrowin： After two defeats on the bounce, Manchester City are back to winning ways in the same vein as they were right up until the international break. The 4-1 victory over Sunderland in midweek was City back to their best, and now, as we come into Autumn, City are getting in the Halloween spirit early and frightening the league.
da dobrowin： When you come back from an international break, you can never tell what’s going to happen. And City suffered. The last-minute winner against Crystal Palace was the warning sign that things weren’t as they seemed before the break.
There was no team in the country – even defending Champions Chelsea showed it – that could live with City on their early season form. That changed when City visited Crystal Palace. Alan Padrew’s team pushed City the whole way and might feel that they themselves should have won the game with a late goal just before Kelechi Iheanacho won it for City instead.
After that game, the match reports spoke of ‘grinding’ out the result and reminding us that those are the sorts of results that champions routinely pull out of the fire when it looked like they’d draw or even lose.
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But then came West Ham and Juventus. Two games, two 2-1 defeats. The Juve game seemed won after Vincent Kompany leapt on top of Giorgio Chiellini to force the Italian international into an own goal. It was a clear foul, but missed by the referee.
And it was then that we thought Manchester City’s for and good luck was ominous for the rest. They’d win the game with a goal that should never have been given and grind out another result.
But two nice goals – a pinpoint finish from Alvaro Morata and a sumptuous assist from Paul Pogba – were enough to give Juventus the win.
And the West Ham repeated the scoreline. Manchester City’s home record is formidable, they only lose once or twice a year at home if even that. From December 2010 to December 2012, City were unbeaten at home for only 11 days short of two years. That was a few seasons ago, but under Pellegrini too, City have been very hard to beat at home.
Hitting City twice on the counter-attack, West Ham made City uncomfortable each and every time they took the ball forward. Dimitri Payet sized up City just as he has sized up every other team he has faced in his short time in the Premier League, and although a 2-0 lead wasn’t necessarily a fair reflection of the game up until that point, it’s hard to argue that West Ham shouldn’t have been ahead.
But although the Hammers won that game, City battered them for more than 45 minutes. For ten minutes before half time, City were totally in the ascendency and West Ham couldn’t get out of their own half. And then after half time, the same service was resumed: City had over 70% of the possession and nearly 30 attempts on goal.
The sheer scale of the dominance was one thing. City should really have made it count, and although they didn’t, they shouldn’t be too disappointed in defeat. Chelsea and Manchester United both closed the gap on the early leaders, but there is more to City than that game showed, and they proved it on Tuesday night.
At Sunderland, City were again frightening going forward, as you’d expect from a team including Sterling, Aguero, De Bruyne and Toure. David Silva is still to come back into the team, and when he does, we’ll see City at their absolute strongest. They let their guard drop for a couple of games, but they’ve put the scream mask back into place, picked up the scythe and are walking around the neighbourhood scaring the living daylights out of the kids.
Manchester City are back in business after those two defeats. This weekend they face Tottenham, a team they’ve beaten by some heavy scorelines over the last few seasons – since May 2010 and that Peter Crouch goal that gave Spurs a Champions League place at the expense of City, Spurs have lost eight of the last ten games against the Eastlands club.
Manchester City may be Spurs’ bogey team at present, but if they’re coming right back into form for the Premier League game this weekend, they might start to look like the bogey man of the Premier League.
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