For Manchester City at home, Tim Sherwood decided to retain the 4-2-3-1 formation after successfully switching to it for the victory away at Swansea. City opted to be more attacking and went with a 4-4-2, playing both Dzeko and Aguero up front. From the outset it appeared City were the team who believed they would win, and played in that manner, immediately creating chances. They could and should quite easily already have been ahead by the time Silva slipped the ball through for Aguero to clip the ball past Lloris. In the 20 minutes that followed it was remarkable that the score stayed only 1-0, City were dominant, controlling possession and creating numerous chances, and Spurs were left thankful for their wastefulness and to Lloris for a couple of very good saves. Having rode their luck Spurs got stronger as half time approached, and had the ball in the net when Dawson side footed in off the bar at the back post from a vicious Christian Eriksen delivery, but the goal was ruled out for offside, with Adebayor challenging for the ball in the middle of the six yard box having been standing a yard offside when the ball was delivered.
At the start of the second half, when Dzeko went through on goal, Danny Rose launched into an inadvisable last ditch tackle, the referee Andre Marriner hesitated but the linesman flagged for a penalty, cue the City players surrounding Marriner demanding Rose be sent off, and they got their wish. Replays showed that Rose played the ball, and was therefore very unfortunate to earn a red card and concede a penalty, indeed the FA have since rescinded the card so we can safely say the wrong decision was made on the day. The frustrating aspect of it was that the linesman was the man in the best position to see what had happened, and he was the one to give the penalty, initially there was no reaction from Marriner. Captain Kompany led his team mates in calling for a red card in the unedifying scenes that followed. Of course this is nothing new, players have been applying pressure for decisions to be made in their favour probably since football began, but it's never nice to see, particularly when they're calling for someone to be sent off. I recently watched the ITV Roy Keane Patrick Vieira documentary; Best Of Enemies, at one point Keane is shown looking at a photo of himself aggressively shouting in a referee's face, for which he rightly expressed regret. Anyway back to the match, and City unsurprisingly went on to dominate against 10 man Spurs, with Dzeko (who for the rest of the match was giving a masterclass of poor finishing) adding a third goal. After a brief show of defiance by Spurs in which they got a goal back thanks to Capoue's first for the club, City added two more goals with Jovetic cutting in from the left far too easily for the fourth goal, and Kompany tapping in a fifth in the dying minutes.
Man City are averaging 4 goals per game this season, so to concede 5 when playing for 44% of the match with 10 men perhaps isn't so bad but the manner in which one or two of the goals were conceded after the red card was worryingly familiar. Over the last few years as Spurs have become stronger and established themselves as the fifth best club in a league where the top four places are the holy grail, they have always shown themselves to be capable of stunning collapses comparable to England's cricketers in the recent Ashes series. Under Harry we enjoyed relative success compared to what preceded his reign - albeit with one less trophy won than in Juande Ramos's short lived tenure - but we had games where an early setback would set in motion a full scale capitulation of the team. Away at Young Boys in the Champions League qualifier on a plastic pitch we went 3-0 down in the opening 30 minutes, before the team gathered themselves and fought back to 3-2, going on to demolish them in the second leg. Away at Inter in the Champions League group stages a couple of months later we were 4-0 down and had been reduced to 10 men within 35 minutes of kick off, this time Gareth Bale single handedly restored some pride with a magnificent second half hatrick. In the FA Cup fourth round that year we were once again down to 10 men and chasing a 4-0 deficit at half time, on this occasion there was no Bale to provide his San Siro heroics and the game finished 4-0. Our entertaining Champions League run came to an end that season when we were 1 goal and 1 man down inside 15 minutes at the Bernabeu in the Quarter final first leg, and went on to record another 4-0 defeat. Since then there have been two 5-2 away defeats at Arsenal in which we finished both games with 10 men, a 5-1 defeat to Chelsea in the FA Cup semi final, a 5-1 home defeat by Man City, and then this season a 6-0 loss to City, a 5-0 home defeat to Liverpool, and now another 5-1 humbling by City, with players sent off in the latter two games.
Some of these games I mention we were playing against superior opposition and you've got to accept heavy defeats are part of the game, and in other matches we've had off days, which all teams experience. It just seems to me that we have too many off days for a team that is always challenging at the top end of the table, it feels like perhaps there is a lack of mental strength in the squad, and has been for some time. There's nobody who can galvanise his team mates in adversity in the style of someone like Roy Keane or Steven Gerrard. Perhaps Jan Vertonghen or Sandro can develop into that kind of leader in the future, and Sherwood can foster a stronger mentality and team spirit in the dressing room, here's hoping, because I've watched enough severe beatings to last me a lifetime.
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