Forever Blue With Ian Cheeseman: City Slip Up On New Year's Eve

As well as exchanging Happy New Year messages to each other on our first meeting in 2023, we also wonder what the next twelve months will bring.

Football is the great escape from life. In reality, it’s just our entertainment, it’s not life and death, but we all need something like football to divert our passions towards when so much else in the World feels frustrating and beyond our control right now. 

My big sporting passion is Manchester City, although of course what happens on the pitch is just as far out of my control as politics and the financial worries we all have. On New Years Eve, I was gifted something really special. One of my sponsors allowed me to use a private box at the Etihad Stadium for the game against Everton. I took my family and a few of those who’ve supported me recently. 

It was an amazing experience off the field, though the Blues only drew 1-1 with struggling Everton. Pep Guardiola’s team had lost their last Premier League home game before the World Cup, when Brentford took all three points with a 2-1 win. 

It’s true to say that the teams who visit City, these days, defend deep and use all their skills in the black arts to slow the game down and frustrate. Pep’s team, for a long time, have had the answer, with the attacking threat coming from every angle. The so called “false nine” was very difficult to defend against and the speedy, slick, first time passing of Pep’s men was almost always successful, sometimes by big scores.

They had pace and inventiveness aplenty, with Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus. Before  that David Silva and Leroy Sane, and plenty of other options. This season, City have changed the way they play and rely more heavily of the wand-like right foot of the amazing Kevin De Bruyne, to pick out the goal machine Erling Haaland. When that combination works, City are unstoppable, but on the days when the opposition can snuff out that threat, the Blues appear to have less alternatives than they did before. 

In the latter stages of the draw with Everton, De Bruyne seemed to be carrying the team on his back, making tireless runs all over the pitch. He tried everything, but with less support than he has been used to in recent seasons. Haaland’s threat is obvious for all to see, but without that precision pass from KDB, he’s not as effective.

City played with inverted wingers against the Toffees. That seems a strange tactic to me when Haaland is leading the line. His powerful running down the middle would be perfect for a left footed left winger and a right footed right winger who could send in early crosses. In recent games Jack Grealish and Riyad Mahrez, who generally use their weaker foot simply to stand on, and aren’t quick by modern standards, can’t take advantage of having Haaland in the team as much as they’d like. 

Both those wide men also have a habit of slowing City’s slick passing down by holding onto the ball before cutting back inside and killing the momentum and threat City might have had when they gained possession.

You can’t blame City’s opponents from generally playing on the break, and that’s exactly what they do. At the moment it’s proving successful too many times and is harming City’s title challenge.

Ironically table toppers Arsenal, coached by Mikel Arteta, who was with Guardiola at City, have now built a team that plays the way City used to play and added Gabriel Jesus and Oleks Zinchenko, who’d been key players at City, to their squad.

Next up for City is a trip to Chelsea. I believe Pep will change things at Stamford Bridge and the Blues will win the game, but another slip might create legitimate concerns that the City team of 2023 is not as strong as has been during the last couple of years. It’s only football though and it’s always great to be a Blue!