MAN CITY 1 – 2 Everton – MY THOUGHTS
21 Dec
It was just never going to happen. A win would have taken us top at Christmas for the first time in 81 years. A home match against a side languishing near the foot of the table. A side reduced to ten men early in the second half. But the phrase ‘typical City’ yet again reared its ugly head and meant that we enter the festive period in third position.
After any defeat, let alone one that is as disappointing as this, it’s tough to remain positive. But that is what we need to do. And do you know what, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Don’t bow into media pressure. Don’t let negativity invade your thoughts. We are third in the Premier League, two points off the top. If you had offered me that before the season started, you would only have one hand left.
Everton, as much as it pains me to say it, deserved the three points, as they always do when they visit Eastlands. They produced a battling performance, full of spirit and desire and thanks to two early goals from Tim Cahill and Leighton Baines, they had something to defend. We struggled to break them down, as we lacked the tempo and width to penetrate a solid backline.
A shot from Yaya Touré which deflected off Phil Jagielka gave us hope, but in the end, we couldn’t find an equaliser, partly due to the brilliance of goalkeeper Tim Howard. Both sides finished with ten men after Kolo Touré received two bookings in the space of a minute in injury time, but despite the immediate despondency, I’m filled with positivity for the rest of the season.
There were some poor performances from our players yesterday, most notably Mario Balotelli and Carlos Tévez, the latter of whom has withdrawn his transfer request and will continue to play for the Blues. However, it looked as if last week’s saga was playing on his mind, as he returned to his avaricious ways, refusing to pass to teammates and slowing our tempo. But looking at the situation as a whole, Mancini is in the midst of instilling a winning mentality. That will take time but he is doing a fantastic job of bringing together a plethora of diverse egos and forming a title chasing side.
The media will seize on this defeat and will surely highlight our supposed lack of unity and fight, but it’s worth noting that if we had won this, Mancini would have been lauded as world-class, people would have backed us for the title, and we would have been praised all round. But lose the game and we are again in crisis. I urge you to not be fickle and to have faith that it will come right. In Mancini, Cook, Mubarak, Mansour et al, I believe.
As you predicted, I love the ending, it is sublime
Lets face it mate, Everton have became only second to Spurs in the bogey team stakes over these last 3/4 years and it doesn’t look like thats gonna change. We were just so poor in the first twenty minutes and to let a team who could not buy a win for the last two months get two goals like we did was inexcusable. All the talk about Tevez handing in a transfer request had caused a distraction to all parties,(including the man himself) and the game was all but over by the time we woke up. That is done now and players like Yaya, Silva, Kolarov and Balotelli will hopefully gain from the experience as we forget too easily what little experience they have in the Premier League against teams like these. We have had a good run ended, agreed, but it is up to these players to show us they have improved and they can bounce back quicker from this set-back than they did when we had a similar game against Arsenal. I believe they will show that they have but we will see on Boxing Day. Merry Christmas to all City fans and get ready for a really good 2011. Believe.
Everton fan here – have to disagree when you say we deserved to win. I actually thought we were EXTREMELY lucky, something which has evaded us for some time! A few handballs, we could have been down to 9 men, and some lacklustre defending and attacking from City gave us a big advantage in the match.
City only have one major problem – you don’t have a defence. If it had been 0-0 at halftime, which it should have been, i have no doubt you would have gone on to win that game. However, as you let in 2 easy goals, we had a big lead to defend away from home after only 20 minutes. Against Everton at 2-0 away from home, any team in the world would find it hard to break us down.
Thanks for the comment, but I’m afraid I disagree with you over our defence. Over the season, it’s the second best in the league. Kolo and Kompany have been outstanding. This was just a one-off poor performance.
We have kept clean sheets so far this season to Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs to name but 4. Not many sides will do that…