That was possibly the best 50 minutes football I've ever seen Manchester City play. 4-0 was a fair reflection of the game at that point as City simply overwhelmed and overpowered United. A few thoughts:
- Sometimes Yaya Toure is like a force of nature, just unstoppable and too powerful. Sunday was one of those days. A couple of years ago I heard a good analogy for Toure - he's like the Ents from Lord of the Rings. Slow to get going, can spend much of the time looking sleepy but once roused utterly unstoppable.
- The captain was imperious. It's strange to think that in a game we dominated by attacking, possibly the best player on the pitch was a defender. Vincent Kompany was just magnificent.
- What's wrong with Nastasic this season? Is it just me or is he not playing well? Last year it took me a while to realise how good he was. He didn't stand out because everything was done so efficiently with a minimum of fuss. He was rarely out of position, and in the end this is what stood out for me - how he quietly and efficiently did his job. This season he's stood out more and not in a good way. Arguably he should have been sent off for a second yellow on Sunday. Let's hope this is a temporary drop in form and he's soon back to his best.
- Nasri's best game for City?
- Kolorov demonstrated a perfect example of how attack is sometimes the best form of defence. By attacking he pushed Valencia back meaning he didn't need to do much defending. Kolorov's defending isn't as good as Clichy's but when he attacks like he did in the Derby, he doesn't have much defending to do.
- At times there was a simplicity to City's attacking which is hid how difficult it is to achieve. There was a lot of quick pass-and-move. Barcelona have spent the past few years becoming the masters of pass-and-move but at a slow pace, looking to keep the ball at all costs. Last year Dortmund and Bayern did it at pace. Are City heading down the Dortmund/Bayern route tactically? The team is still evolving but in a very interesting direction.
- I just love the picture of Kompany celebrating the fourth goal above. Sums up the day.
Finally, at the risk of sounding like I'm defending David Moyes, am I the
only one who thought his substitution made sense tactically? It was
done far too late (should have been at half-time) but it reminded me of
how Mancini often used De Jong. I had thought the media had realised
from that that bringing on a defensive midfielder is not necessarily a
defensive substitution, yet all the reports I've read call it a damage limitation move, trying to stop more goals going in. I don't agree.
To explain this, think about the following. United had no control of the game, no decent possession. So having 4 attacking players on isn't much of a threat. 3 attacking players with the ball are more dangerous than 4 without. By bringing on Cleverley, it first gets an extra body into a central midfield area that Yaya and Fernandinho were dominating. That should get them more possession. It also allowed Fellani to get forward more (as would happen with Yaya when De Jong came on) and they could change the shape of their team to pose a different attacking threat for the defence to deal with.
After the substitution, United did play better and were more of an attacking threat although much of that could have been City relaxing with the game already won. According to much of the media, it was a defensive move though. Unfortunately they still see substitutions as a 1-for-1 change and don't bother to look at other changes that may follow such as how the shape of the team changes. This is something Mancini used to do a lot, a substitution and a change of formation at the same time. Sometimes it worked, such as the time he replaced Aguero with Kolorov at 0-0 away at Wigan and we went on to win 2-0, sometimes it didn't.
