A hard regime’s soft-power project is reaching its final expression – footballing brilliance but a sense of dislocationShortly after the 4-1 evisceration at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday night, a title decider that felt at times like an entirely self-contained event, Manchester City’s players simply having a conversation with themselves, Arsenal’s Twitter feed posted 30 seconds of approved Aaron Ramsdale apology content.Ramsdale thanked the fans. He spoke nicely about the need to keep on keeping on. In a moment of arch, algorithm-driven satire this post was accompanied by a sponsored advert for something called “the New Melts”, a horrific-looking pizza-style food product, pictured in grisly closeup sagging out of its cardboard skin. Continue reading...
It was a team performance against Arsenal that verged on a kind of physical, technical and tactical perfectionWhen did it become not just clear but utterly unavoidable that Manchester City were winning this game? And not just winning it but offering up the most refined of sporting strangulations?Perhaps it was the moment on 25 minutes when Rob Holding came skittering out wildly, like a drop of water on a hot pan, as Kevin De Bruyne hared in behind him, a moment of total positional panic, when the game just seemed suddenly to fall apart in the face of that sky blue pressure. Continue reading...
After a mixed start to life at Manchester City, the Algerian has grown into one of Pep Guardiola’s most influential playersFour years ago Riyad Mahrez may have been excused mixed feelings when, at the end of his first season with Manchester City, they won the domestic treble. He had hardly been incidental to the fact but nor had he proved pivotal: form-wise it had been a mixed introduction to the relentless demands of Pep Guardiola’s football and he would admit, in hindsight, that settling in took time. You hardly needed to scour the internet’s darkest corners to find references to a £60m flop but his only crime was not being the finished article.Now City are on course for a more...
The Allianz Arena still expects visitors to crumble but Germany’s perennial champions were very much second-best against Manchester City Two hours and 53 minutes into this Champions League quarter-final, Bayern Munich finally scored. It was a Joshua Kimmich penalty, moot and meaningless, but still smashed into the very centre of the goal as if to make a point. Hey. Pssst. Lads. Maybe try aiming for the big netted thing. The one between the two metal things. It’s surprisingly roomy!The finer details of this 4-1 aggregate defeat will be lost to the winds of history. Yet over the two legs of this tie, Bayern’s expected goal tally of 3.49 was just a fraction behind Manchester City’s at 4.23. Both sides got...
Could Trent Alexander-Arnold’s travails at Liverpool be helped by stepping inside into midfield as the full-back role evolves?One of the easiest and most misleading pieces of footballing received wisdom is that everything is cyclical. Wait long enough, the great drum of history will revolve again and the same ideas will come back round, be that sharp side-partings, the back three, Howard Webb apologising to Brighton or Roy Hodgson managing Crystal Palace. Except time is not a flat circle. Each iteration is different because it comes with knowledge of what went before.Watch Manchester City in possession. They have a centre-forward and two wide men. They have Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva or Ilkay Gündogan as “free 8s”, essentially old-fashioned inside-forwards....