Liverpool v Manchester City 26/08/12
Manchester
City travelled to Liverpool aiming to record their first victory at Anfield for
nine seasons (Only our away record Arsenal is worse, at 15 games since our last
league win). We have also never kept a clean sheet at Anfield in the Premier
League, another indicator of our poor away record at Liverpool. Obviously, this
was the first time we had visited Liverpool as reigning Premier League
Champions and I, like most City fans, were confident heading into the match.
In terms of City
team news, De Jong, Milner, Kolo Toure, Kolarov and Balotelli came in for Lescott,
Clichy, Rodwell, Silva and the injured Aguero. Mancini had the Champions set up
in a 3-5-2/3-4-1-2 formation which had been experimented with in pre-season.
Liverpool also made changes with Raheem Stirling making his full league debut. Again,
Liverpool seem to be in transition with Brendan Rodgers trying to get them
playing a short passing game, focused on possession and retaining the ball. I think
the manner in which three of the four goals were scored, may indicate that both
teams were struggling to adapt to new styles of play (City playing the new
formation). City were superb at defending set-pieces last season and will be disappointed
at the way Skrtel was allowed a free header from a corner, and City’s last goal
came from a back pass from Skrtel to Reina which was left short, Tevez nipped
in, rounded the keeper and finished with ease. It’s easy to speculate, but would
Skrtel have cleared the ball last season? Was he under pressure to keep the
ball under the new ‘possession-driven’ regime? Only he will know. Liverpool will
also be disappointed about the way the first City goal was gifted to Yaya Toure
in the box, after Kelly failed to clear his lines. With regards to Liverpool’s
second goal, Joe Hart will surely be disappointed about Suarez’s free-kick from
long distance. At the time of that goal, City had conceded four shots on target
in the first two games of the season, all four of which resulted in a goal.
In the opening
stages of the game, City were in control and looked confident in the new
system. The new formation isn’t commonly played in England, and implementing it
successfully requires tactical precision. The wing-backs, arguably the most
important players in this system, need to fully understand their role and
position. I don’t think Milner and Kolarov did particularly well yesterday.
Both of them pushed up quite high, which left gaps on the wings which stretched
our three central defenders. Stirling, who has bags of pace, troubled Kolo
Toure on the left once he found space in behind Milner. Kolo Toure gets quite a
bit of ‘stick’ from City fans, I don’t think he played badly yesterday and
actually made the most successful tackles out of any player on the pitch (6/7).
Admittedly, he did get stripped for pace quite a few times by Sterling and to
me it would have seemed more logical to play Lescott, which would have meant
moving Zabaleta to the right side of the defence to deal with Sterling. But who
am I to argue with a man who has just delivered our first league title in
forty-four years?
Other than
that I don’t think there was much to discuss about tactically. It almost seemed
like the teams were pre-occupied with fitting in a new system of play than
trying to tactically outsmart one another, which resulted in a great game for
the neutral.
Fairly happy
with a draw, and I think it is a typical example of a game we would have lost a
couple of seasons ago. Great teams get points from games in which they don’t play
particularly well in.
We’re Man City, we’ll fight ‘til the
end.....
City’s best player: Hard to pick but I think I’ll go
with Tevez. 20/25 successful ‘attacking third passes’, 4/4 successful ‘take ons’,
3/5 succesful ‘aeriel duels’. Very unlucky not to score in the first half and
showed a cool head to round the keeper for the final equaliser.
Diagram of all
Tevez’s attacking third passes. It shows the impact he has all over the attacking
third of the pitch.
