City 4 Newcastle 0 - a few thoughts

Well that was a good start wasn't it? Yes it's just one game, but City looked impressive last night and there are already noticeable differences in the style of play. Here are a few observations on last night’s game:

• City moved the ball much quicker. There was a 'directness' about the ball movement. Not directness in the style of the long-ball game. More a sense of move the ball quickly forward through quick sharp and short passing. The long, slow patient build-up play that characterised City under Mancini looks to have been replaced by something much more aggressive.
• Off the ball there was more aggression when it came to pressing. There was almost a Barcelona style of aggression to it at times.
• Early in the game I felt this meant we weren't controlling possession as much as we used to. This is reflected in stats showing we only had 55% possession, despite Newcastle going into damage limitation mode and sitting back for the second half. This is probably a result of the more aggressive, quicker passing.
• If we will allow the opposition more possession this season, then the defence is going to come under more pressure. There was little to learn from this game about how the defence will be organised under Pellegrini as Newcastle offered little attacking threat. In fact, at half time I realised I wasn't even sure if we were still using zonal marking at corners or not. Even now I'm not sure.
• Sky's commentators tried to pin down City as playing a 4-4-2 formation. This was a very simplistic view of the formation. The fluidity of the front 6 was such that the shape of the team was constantly changing. There's an excellent analysis of a key feature that makes this fluidity work by Michael Cox at the Guardian.

We will have much bigger tests, but this is a promising start. One word I've used frequently above is aggressive. There was a general aggression about City's attacking play, both with and without the ball. For me this is a welcome development although it remains to be seen what the implications are defensively from this.