by walmai » Sun Sep 20, 2015 10:08 am
It was my sister's 50th yesterday and I was at the party with only me phone for score-checking possibilities. Its a bit selfish for her to have not sorted out Sky for the blokes who attended, but, that's another issue.
Anyway, having dragged meself out of bed for 0730 this morning, I have to of course concede that we rode our luck in the second half yesterday. Adrian came back into the team and it could have gone all a bit Pete from the very start, what with his punch up in the air early on, but he grew into the game and stood shoulder to shoulder with the rest of our defence. That was truly one of Winston Reid's finest performances for us, since we bought him over 4 years back. He was partnered by a replacement, too, given that Ogbonna got injured on Monday. Reports say that De Bruyne ran Cresswell ragged and I don't doubt that. One of my early posts on this thread suggested that our FB's were our achilles heel, but they just about held on.
Looking at the goals that were scored, on an ideal day, for both of them, our first and your goal would have been saved by the respective keepers. They were great strikes, no doubt, but hit from the kind of distance you'd expect top class keepers (and Hart is obviously one of those, even if you might raise an eyebrow or two about my so labeling Adrian) to at least get a hand to them. The one thing that I would say, because I am patting my own back by half-predicting it, about ours is that perhaps Hart would have expected his defence to get closer to Moses before he struck the ball. He took more than one touch iirc.
Our second was well-worked, but also perhaps arose out of the fact that your CB's possibly dozed off for that fateful half-second, as the ball went across the area.
After that, of course, it was The Alamo at The Etihad. We have to expect that. Sometimes, of course, the resilience of the defenders can see off the accuracy, pace and technique of an incredible cast of attackers and we just about did that. I doubt very much that such problems will surface repeatedly in your season even if I do venture to suggest - perhaps in a whisper - that Sterling (to me at least) is in fact not the standard of player that your team actually achieves without him. Sure, he's got pace to burn, but....he needs more to stay in your team, maybe?
So, all in all, two records evaporated yesterday - cos you lost and we conceded. And we aint gonna stay second forever, that's perhaps a given. I hear the complaint about time-wasting and know that any old excuse about 'everyone doing it these days' will cut little ice in Manchester today. Fair dues to Nobes, though, he dragged up Jenkinson, when he lay on the floor, and told him to get treated off the pitch if he was hurt.
I'll be keeping a careful eye on your CL exploits and, whenever you're not playing us (the return match is of course your last ever visit to the Boleyn, so enjoy it), hope that you do well.
Onto Vi-ic-to-ry!
Altogether now