Great performance overall, excellent character shower by the team.
Sterling needs to have more confidence in his ability to do, and stop over thinking things. Dropping Aguero clearly worked, and with the coming of Jesus I think we'll get he right upfront before long, clearly we'd been told to shoot more often and the result is a win.
Yaya did great, he bad a presence about him that few carry and quite frankly we need it in this moment just as much as anything - the opposition hesitate a second with Yaya and it gives us a yard or two.
Sending off, fair enough if that is his interpretation, but never dangerous and actually only one foot went in to the tackle. More infuriating werr the referees decisions thereafter, where several similar challenges on both sides were not carded at all, and the fact that he didn't play the advantage for us when we had a four on three, then did play the advantage when we were down to ten and Yaya was asking for the free kick as nothing was on. Inept at best.
Can completely understand Pep's reaction in the post match interview. There is a glaring discrepancy there in the figures, even if you don't believe the idea of a bias. To continually have around 70% possession in games but recieve more yellow cards and concede more fouls than our opponents speaks of some pretty striking conclusions :
1. Our opponents are not making many challenges on us whilst we have the ball. I think the condition of our players ankles post game would contradict this, and I can't imagine any manager saying to his team "when city have the ball, sit back and don't challenge".
2. We have a tendency to foul as soon as we lose the ball. Yet many city fans cry out for our players to make more challenges when we don't have the ball, me included.
3. We have a tendency to dive in to challenges. Hard to argue with this one when you have otamendi on your team, but I think I've seen several of our opponents diving this season and being given the benefit of the doubt. We don't seem to get that.
In summary, it's clear to me that there is an opinion formed by the officials pre game. For us, this means they feel city want to play on when fouled, the beautiful passing game etc etc, so when ankles are tapped it goes unpunished.
For our opponents, most would prefer every free kick given rather than play on, especially as they expect to have so little of the ball and precious few chances against us - every free kick is a chance to get physical with us and launch it long.
This assumption too that we are less physical that most teams works against us. We don't get decisions based on strength. If we losers header and we're being grappled, then it is us being physically inferior. If we win a physical duel then there is an assumption that we have used unfair means, because we are supposed to be physically inferior.
Or, in short, were getting the shitty end of the stick either way.
I would never support looking for free kicks, but what would be telling is if we did, would we get more decisions or would we be held to account for cheating?
So, back to what we can focus on - a great team performance where we overcame a big challenge and answers some questions on our ability, focus and appetite for the fight. Well done lads, I'm proud.
