This is the kind of game that excites me. All the ingredients for a good game was there. A rollercoaster of attacks. Bruising individual battles. Mistakes. Controversial decisions. Grit and determination to win the ball.
2-1 to City seems like a fair result to me, given their dominance of the game. Mancini played with a 4-4-2 initially but changed to a 3-5-2 midway through the second half but that actually did not impact the game by much. The most important point about the game tactically was that Mancini noted a loophole in Tottenham's defence, which was that their central defenders played far apart and higher up the field than normal teams. Therefore, he adopted a plan where their main route of attack came from treading long through balls to Aguero and sometimes Tevez between Gallas and Caulker. This amounted to many offsides for Aguero but once the pass and run is alighned, the strikers found themselves in one on one situations with Friedel, which happened twice for Aguero but he fluffed both chances. One thing to note about this: the long passes came from all areas of the pitch and all the players, showing the quality of the City team where all their players are technically proficient enough to produce such hard to execute passes. Ironically, both of their goals did not come from this route but through shorter quality passes closer to the penalty box. The first goal came through dispossession of Tottenham close to the penalty box and Toure just barged his way through and passed to Aguero who did a nice fake before slotting the ball in coolly. The second goal was on even higher quality. A nice chipped pass by Silva saw Dzeko in loads of space and he produced a wonderful finish that left Friedel with no chance.
Tottenham ruthlessly exposed Man City's weakness in the latter stages of the first half, which was that they were unable to organise the defence properly to defend against any fast paced cross into the box. This is an area that I had identified in the preview and I was very surprised that they did not get the ball more to Bale to deliver such crosses. Indeed, apart from that period close to the end of the first half, Spurs rarely delivered in crosses to test City. Right before the goal, City had failed to properly deal with a long throw and that should have come as a warning to the team. That was a warning that was not heeded though and Tottenham scored through their next attack from a pacy cross by Huddlestone from a free kick which Caulker powerfully headed into the goal. It might be argued that the header had just too much speed on it but I still feel Hart could have done more and he arched his back backwards unnecessarily, allowing the ball to bounce off him into goal instead of to drop in front of him.
The game had some more interesting aspects though. One was the indiscipline of City players especially after they went a goal down. Seemingly frustrated at not having the ball, they fouled Tottenham players frequently and yet still dared to argue fiercely with the referee, with the chief mastermind being Yaya Toure, who had to be calmed down by his captain. Even worse was Zabaleta, who looked like he had a personal feud with Adebayor and kept fouling and picking a quarrel with him. This seemed a little out of character for the Argentinian and I wonder whether it was a spat brought forward from Adebayor's time at City. All these caused a very fiery atmosphere and the challenges came in fast and furious and made for very good viewing in the eyes of a neutral audience.
The second aspect was not as fun to watch. It was the performance of the referee, Michael Oliver. A very clear penalty shout came in the 23rd minute when the ball very obvious bounced off Gallas' outstretched hand and the decision was not given. The commentator did mention that perhaps his view was blocked by the sea of players and in that respect, he was not helped by his assistants who did not bring the matter to his attention. What really irked me came 6 minutes later, when he booked Walker for a sliding tackle that barely caught the opponent. It seemed like he was just giving the card even though it was a soft foul as amends for not giving City the penalty. Well, I thought to myself 'Let's see what happens later. Maybe he will be consistent.' I did not have to wait long. Just a minute later, Zabaleta went through the back of Adebayor with a slide and it looked a definite yellow card but no, Mike Oliver did not give it. His controlling of the players also seemed non-existant though this might be due to his young age and he might be able to check the tempers of the players better with more experience.
City manages to keep up with United while Tottenham falls further behind in their chase for 4th place. Of course, the season is never decided this early in the season and continue their chase of the teams occupying their favoured spot after the midweek international friendlies.
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