Just watched the game back on City+...
Didn’t notice it last night but both teams were rubbish in the first 15mins, giving the ball away for fun. Liverpool then took over the game for 5mins and had the chance that hit the post, which woke City up!
I notice that the ref was just about to call for a drinks break but decided not to and then we got a penalty which Henderson was furious about. Haha
We then took over the game from there.
Noticed that every time we play 2 defensive mids against Liverpool, we win. We’ve yet to play that way at Anfield yet...
Did Ederson handle the ball outside the box? I think he did, glad nobody’s mentioned it in the press because it always ends up being evened up by a red card elsewhere the next week with us!
Tactically, the way we pulled their defenders out of position, was superb from City. But I thought we gave the ball away far too much. No individuals were really at fault for this, pretty much everyone was at it. Nothing major in terms of this game but on another day that could be costly!
Foden, Sterling and de Bruyne were all good in patches (even then all 3 needed to do much better in some situations), Thought Foden and Sterling were actually even better defensively than they were in attack.
Jesus has not had a good run of form since we’ve come back and he needs to get his game going! He worked hard though.
I noticed again that City play very tactically and technically in all situations, whereas Liverpool are more of a team that tries to cause panic and rush the ball forward.
Nowt wrong with either way of playing, similarly there’s nowt wrong with other ways of playing neither, like teams who kick a lot of high balls forward. It’s what makes the Prem so hard because there are four or five different styles across the teams (in some leagues there’s one, maybe two styles across a whole league).
Tell you what, we were far from our best but could have easily come away with a bigger win. We only really played well in spells and no individual was particularly great. But we were just miles better on the night, Imagine what it could have been if we’d been firing at all cylinders...