A Tale of Two Cities

Manchester City’s players showed what quality they have in a match where Norwich City showed they lack in every department.

Playing at a high tempo, Man City pinged the ball around in neat triangles dominating possession and relentlessly pursuing goals. The skill and trickery of Aguero and Silva was too much for Norwich’s lumbering defence to ever hope to deal with and it was 4 nil inside 40 minutes.

Pelligrini showed a tactical master stroke in selecting a lot of exceptionally talented attacking players, (Nasri, Fernandinho, Toure, Silva, Aguero and Negredo) against a team that can’t defend; as shown against Manchester United Reserves in the Capital One Cup. The outcome was inevitable in this match as I fear it is for Norwich’s season. They are going down.

When Man City played Man United earlier this season their speed and movement allowed them to slice through their opponents like a guillotine through a nobleman’s neck; frighteningly quick, effortless, and dismissive. Fittingly for Halloween, Man City swept through Saturday’s opposition like ghosts through a wall; Norwich were petrified and offered absolutely no resistance at all. Not once. Well Ok they resisted once, blocking a Silva shot only for the ball to rebound off Bradley Johnson and loop, in a sad, inescapable fashion, over the keeper for an own goal. After that, Norwich saw the outcome that any real effort would bring and clearly thought, like Eeyore the donkey, ‘what’s the point?’

After City’s early success by running around a bit and passing the ball out wide, they sat back and let Norwich have a go. A foray to the edge of City’s area seemed to not sit right with Norwich and so they decided to give the ball back and apologised for attacking by immediately letting City score a second. Nasri picked up the ball just inside his own have and tried a new tactic of kicking high and far forward to Aguero. This classic ploy completely dumfounded Norwich’s defence, Aguero took the ball down with a sublime touch and saw Silva strolling along without a single defender or midfielder tracking his run. Simple pull back, strong drive, 2 nil, game over.

The third came along swiftly. City won a corner and Norwich couldn’t resist the opportunity to show everyone how they could defend a dead-ball just as poorly as a moving one. The corner came in and met Nastasic's head, Russell Martin, jumping late, kindly helped it into the top corner.

Ten minutes later and it was 4. Norwich, now resembling a table football team they were so static, watched City have fun and show off. A lovely, intricate combination of passes ended with Toure lifting the ball into the area for Aguero to control and flick across the goal mouth in one fluid movement, Negredo was there to tap it in.

After half time there was some more shocking Norwich defending who continued to assist Man City’s strikers by giving them the ball in dangerous places. Toure scored a nice free kick, Aguero was teed up beautifully by Norwich’s Bassong to make it 6. Dzecko was allowed to turn and shoot accurately into the bottom corner.

I’ll finish on the story that dominated the build-up to this match. It was a stroke of genius by Pelligrini to drop Hart or it might have been, er… 7 nil. Although Hart should take comfort from the fact that even though he did not play, he still did better than is understudy for England, Ruddy. Pantanmillion, on the other hand, will find it hard to get back into the Romanian squad playing for City. If they carry on like this he might never need to make a save.