- The new South Stand is impressive, it looks huge. I don't know the stats, but from where I was sat in the third tier of the East Stand it looks taller than the the rest of the stadium. It's just a shame the away fans have a part of it as that has the potential to be a wall of noise.
- The tone for City's performance was set in the first 30 seconds when David Silva spun away from Febregas and played Aguero in on goal with the most beautiful pass that cut straight through the Chelsea defence. After that, City seemed to be causing problems for the Chelsea defence and creating chances almost at will for the rest of the first half.
- When Begovic saved 3 of Aguero's early chances, and then Aguero missed another I started to worry that Aguero was still in his 'getting back to form' phase that he often spends 4 or 5 games going through after an injury. Thankfully, the chances he was getting seemed to accelerate that and he eventually did score.
- The game itself was at times a full on physical battle. Some credit must go to the referee for this. While he didn't get everything right, he let enough go that players could fly into tackles knowing that robust tackles wouldn't be penalised just for being robust. Mostly the game was played in that spirit
- The exception to that spirit was the Fernandinho-Costa personal battle just before half time. As many have said, Fernandinho could have seen red for his elbow. On another day he would have but given the way the game was refereed, perhaps a yellow was right. And what punishment should Costa have got for his snide 'challenge' on Fernandinho a few minutes earlier? In the end, half time came to Costa's rescue as he'd clearly lost it after Fernandinho's challenge.
- The first 15-20 minutes of the second half saw the one period where Chelsea showed any degree of superiority. It ended after Hazard had missed their one good chance and City then decided to spend a few minutes playing keep-ball. I thought this was excellent game management from City. It calmed the game down and took the sting out of any Chelsea revival.
- After that we scored our second goal from a corner of the season. Already! After being generally useless from corners last season, this was always the easiest way to improve the team and the early signs are that we have.
- City were so good in this game it's difficult to single out any individual. Several had excellent games. Aguero got the official man of the match, Kolorov and Mangala were excellent, Sagna had arguably his best game so far for us. But for me, Fernandinho was superb. He did a lot of work in the midfield battle, ensuring City won that battle.
- Finally a mention must go to some superb trolling of Chelsea. Firstly the stadium DJ playing the Dr Who theme before the game and Madness straight after, and the crowd when Chelsea's physios made their appearance. Both hilarious.
It's still early days but so far so good.
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