Swansea 2 v Manchester City 3: City Overcome Dying Swans

You tend to get what you deserve out of football matches and that was exactly what happened to Manchester City against Swansea.

The Manchester City squad had been rotated from the Schalke victory and was largely as predicted. Laporte and Otamendi joined Delph and Walker in the back four. Riyad Mahrez and Gabriel Jesus both started.

Manchester City laboured but the approach was too often casual. Riyad Mahrez missed with an easy header. Both of our Silvas seemed intent on hitting the keeper rather than the goal and to all intents and purposes we all knew how this game was likely to go. City fans of old could feel the Wiganitis in the veins.

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Whilst Klopp would be pulling the faces of cartoon characters and railing against the wind, City just seemed to freeze and it was clear Guardiola could see all the clues as to the how the match was going to pan out as he cut a depressed figure on the bench. Delph gave away a soft penalty with a stupid tackle to make the challenge so much harder.

This mistake was compounded in the first half as Bersant Celina  took advantage of some floundering under pressure to lift a lovely shot over Ederson. That goal changed the game and suddenly a lacklustre City had to chase the game.

The second half followed much the same path for most of the match. City conspired to run continually off side with Walker in particular delaying the passes almost as though he had suddenly forgotten the rules. As fans it was clear that things needed to change and certain players had missed their chance to shine.

Guardiola withdrew Mahrez, Sane and Delph and put Sterling, Zinchenko and Aguero on. The intensity suddenly seemed different and City clawed their way back into the game. Bernardo turned in the first goal. Sterling was then brought down for a penalty which Aguero scored after it went in via the post and the back of the keeper.

City then entered a period of dominance but somehow despite the many attempts by City the goal would not come.  We stumbled and fluffed our chances but then the moment came.

Bernardo crossed from the left in the 88th minute and Aguero stooped to head the ball past the outstretched keeper. This was a lovely goal by any standards. And for me it was even more special because VAR would probably have ruled it out for offside.

City then played an annoying 3 minutes of keep ball by the corner flag, showing skill and determination to do what was necessary to triumph over lower league opposition. The fact the game was much harder than anyone had anticipated simply did not matter in the end. Class will out.

So we progress in the FA Cup and have a semi final at Wembley on the weekend of the 6th April. This means we have some fixture chaos coming up but we still have the possibility of a quadruple and that is priceless at this point in the season. And if you listen really carefully you can hear the salty bitter tears of opposition fans which makes this all even sweeter.