City demolish Chelsea - I've had worse Sunday's

That was impressive all round. The new stand, the atmosphere and, most significantly, City's performance. Some observations on Sunday's win over Chelsea:

• 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.

What a difference 12 days make!

Tonight's FA Cup game was very different from the League game just 12 days ago. Then, City were outdone tactically and physically. Tonight, there was only one team in it. For me the major difference was in midfield. While it helped being able to play a midfielder (Garcia) instead of a defender (Demichelis) in central midfield, I think the selections of Jovetic and Milner was also pivotal. In the league game, Navas and Negredo played. Both of these are excellent players but they don't do a lot to help in the centre of midfield. That's fine when we are winning the battle there, but in the League game we didn't. Milner does more work defensively than Navas, and Jovetic plays a deeper role than Negredo, meaning City had more bodies to help in the midfield battle. This meant City dominated the game.

As well as progressing to the next round, it was good to see Jovetic finally showing us what he can do. I thought he, Silva, Toure and Milner were all excellent. Hopefully, the lessons from the two games against Chelsea will be listened to when preparations for the Barcelona game are made.

Outdone tactically and physically - thoughts on the loss to Chelsea

For the second time this season, City have lost at home. Both times we have lost the tactical battle and the workrate of the opposition has caused major problems. The game against Bayern was widely regarded as the best team in the world teaching us a lesson. Last night, probably the best coach in the world did the same. A few thoughts:

• Tactically I think the key was the work rate of Chelsea's front 4 when we had the ball. Their pressing was brilliant. They picked their moments and then hunted down the ball. The result was that on many occasions our central defenders faced a wall of 3 Chelsea players when they had the ball. This cut off easy passes out and made it very difficult for us to build from the back.
• One result of the pressing from the front was that when we did get the ball forward it was through long or risky passes far more often than normal. As a result we often went forward without the fluidity we've seen, there was less control and more chaos when we had the ball.
• Another result of the pressing was that Chelsea often won the ball back higher up the pitch and with our players forward. This gave them plenty of scope for counter-attacking, something they hit us with many times.
• Plenty will be said about Demichelis playing in midfield, for me he gave a convincing impression of a central defender playing 10 yards too far forward. But it highlights a worrying lack of depth in the squad in central midfield. Behind Yaya and Fernandinho, we only have Garcia and Rodwell. Rodwell is almost permanently injured, and with Garcia and Fernandinho out injured the only options were to move Milner inside or Demichelis.
• The central midfield issue also highlights another worry - where are the academy players? This was something that I noticed at Christmas when, with Zabeleta and Micah Richards out, Clichy played at right-back against Fulham. While Chelsea may not be the game to throw a kid into, Fulham away might be. Where are the academy players to fill in?
• Chelsea deserved to win last night, and it could have been by more as they hit the post 3 times. Despite that, it's not all doom and gloom. We also created chances. On another night we'd have got something from the game.
• City, Chelsea and Arsenal are separated by 2 points. It's a 3 horse race for the title now. With Arsenal facing a very tricky next month, their 2 point lead at this stage is nothing. The title could go to any of us.