Manchester City Fall To Defeat At Chelsea

There were echoes of performances from last April in this Manchester City defeat which may leave the fans more worried.

The pattern behind recent Manchester City defeats is all about how many chances were missed before conceding the all important goals. How the failures to score come back to haunt us. It’s not like the defeats of our Pellegrini team, where we only seemed to be spurred into life after conceding goals.

Against Chelsea we started brightly and took the game to the hosts. A combination of their resolute defending, some luck and the lack of any deadly precision in taking our chances, ensured we did not turn our first half domination into a lead.

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Pep Guardiola surprised us all with his team selection. At Barcelona he became something of a pioneer of playing with a false number 9, without any recognised centre forward. The decision to start this away game to a very good side, without a striker was brave, but did not come off.

Good centre forward play creates space for our midfielders to run into. Without a recognised striker against Chelsea we were not only toothless but found space in between the defensive lines difficult to exploit. It was running and passing without purpose.

The absence of Sergio Aguero can be explained by injury. He has missed quite a few games for us through injury over the years. Guardiola decided against playing Gabriel Jesus, presumably in response to the strikers recent poor form.

If Guardiola is having to make a decision like this in such an important game then perhaps we should be looking for reinforcements in January. Or of course it could be just some genius ploy to get the best out of Jesus. It didn’t look like that was what was happening when Jesus was introduced in the second half.

At the end of the first half City conceded a goal against the run of play scored by Kante of all people. Some poor defending contributed to that. The second goal came from David Luis at a corner.

Our reaction to being behind and under pressure did not produce any noticeable difference in our play. Of course there will be defeats on the way in any season and it is important for City to make a statement in their next games against Hoffenheim and Everton at home to stop the blip from becoming a rot.

I have been following Manchester City for 51 years and have never seen an invincible season, so losing a game away is not something I am too downhearted about. I will also make a prediction that we will lose more games before the season is out.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it is how we react to defeat which will define our season, not whether or not we are defeated. In fact it would be a curious pleasure to finish top above an undefeated Liverpool side.

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The season is long and full of terrors. Winter is coming. Will December become our new April? We will find out over the next 7 days.

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