WHAT A SMACKER!
Sergio scores his 199th goal to give Guardiola his first City silverware
The Pep Guardiola era at Manchester City began in earnest yesterday. Not just a trophy won, but a performance that illustrated the gulf he is putting between his football and that of his elite rivals.
First to fall have been Arsenal, not just sixth of six in the Premier League, but unworthy adversaries in this final. Outplayed and outfought, a shadow of the great teams Arsene Wenger has nurtured in decades past. The stadium announcer trumpeted them as the runners-up as they climbed the steps to collect their medals. They were lucky to get that. Playing like this, they were lucky not to come third.
It was not just that City brushed them aside but that they did so in such predictable fashion. Weak defending for the first; a 31-year-old fastest to react for the second; the towel well and truly thrown in by the time of the third. It takes nothing away from City to say they did not even have to be at their best to inflict this damage.
They were ordinary by their standards in the first half, fast away and a level above Arsenal in the second — but it did not require their A game. City were favourites, of course, so the win is no surprise — but the gap in performance levels was. It is mystifying that Arsenal thought such an insipid display would satisfy in a final.
The League Cup may be number four in a field of four trophies when the season starts but, on the morning of this game, it was still the one Arsenal had most chance of winning — and that should have counted for something.
Instead, after an early scare, a Jack Wilshere break from which Pierre- emerick Aubameyang should have scored, the game settled into an expected pattern: City the livelier, the hungrier, the more inventive.
For the current champions-elect it should not be that way. Arsenal may not be able to match City’s ability, but they should not be second best for enthusiasm. Passion is often an over-rated quality in english football, but this was disappointing.
The least that can be hoped at Wembley is that both teams run around. City had energy levels, particularly in the second half, that Arsenal could not, or would not, emulate.
Take the first goal, which could not have been simpler had it been constructed from a book of plays by long-ball guru Charles hughes. As any number of Premier League inferiors will vouch, route one is a tried and trusted way to go against Arsenal. They do not like it up ’em, as Lance-Corporal Jones would have it, but whether by accident or design, up ’em was exactly where City chose to put it.
Up the field went goalkeeper Claudio Bravo’s kick, up in the air and up to Sergio Aguero, who made a complete fool of Arsenal defender Shkodran Mustafi.
This was a game with access to the video referee, but if another set of eyes was quietly asked to rule on a very mild coming together between Aguero and Mustafi, we can only presume the conclusion was the same as it was for referee Craig Pawson, many in the stadium and most sitting at home: that big, hairy-backed centre halves should be able to look after themselves in challenges with little strikers. And that Mustafi’s protests were as much a sign of embarrassment as any infringement.
Mustafi contrived to get in front of Aguero but not in a position to tie a knot in his supply line. Aguero gave the tiniest nudge, the sort that strikers have to suck up every time they compete for a ball, and Mustafi took a step forward and stood, wrong side, with his arms raised in appeal.
he was still reacting to some imagined crime when Aguero set off for goal with the ball under his command, drawing a frantic David Ospina, who was entitled to expect better protection. To be fair, there are probably 30-year-old packets of condoms at the back of bathroom cabinets that are offering better protection than Mustafi gave his goalkeeper.
Aguero waited until Ospina was too far off his line to recover, but not so far that he might close him down, and lobbed. It was a goal all the way, Ospina watching helplessly as it dipped and bounced towards its target. It was Aguero’s 199th goal for his club. What a player he has been for them.
Arsenal got worse, City got better. That was the story of the second half. In the space of seven minutes, all edge was removed from the game as City scored twice. Their second had most poignancy for those who have followed this journey since before the Abu Dhabi takeover. To think that when Guardiola (left) turned up in Manchester, he regarded every game Vincent Kompany could play as a bonus.
Kompany has weathered 41 injuries in his time at City, and Guardiola thought he might not last another. he didn’t consider Kompany part of his long-term plan, didn’t even factor him in for that season, really. And he wasn’t completely wrong. Kompany has missed 779 days injured at City
and a total of 13 appearances in all competitions in this campaign tells its own tale.
Yet so does the fact that Kompany lifted the first trophy of Guardiola’s reign, and Kompany scored the goal that took the game away from Arsenal.
he started in the landmark win over Manchester United at Old Trafford, and in the recent 4-0 victory at Basle, too. For a forgotten man, this is becoming an increasingly memorable season.
Kompany’s 58th-minute goal marked the end of Arsenal’s resistance and summed up the difference between these two sides. At 32 in April, he may be a relative veteran, but he was thinking quicker than any of the younger men around him. Kevin De Bruyne took a short corner to the edge of
the area, Ilkay Gundogan hit a low shot and Kompany was first to react, turning the ball past Ospina.
One can argue about the position of Leroy Sane, which in the days when football’s rules made sense, would have been ruled offside, but it wasn’t off in the modern game and Pawson did not even go to the video referee to ask if a man standing inside the six-yard box, two yards behind any defender and ahead of the goalkeeper might be interfering with play.
It would have been a moot point anyway because Arsenal pretty much stopped interfering with play themselves. The third goal came in the 65th minute when Wilshere lost the ball, Danilo slipped it into the area and David Silva was first on to it — he could hardly have been second given how slowly Arsenal were moving — finishing smartly to put the outcome beyond doubt. If it ever was.
At the end, Guardiola stood on the pitch watching his players collect the trophy and their medals, and did not join them for the celebration dance and glitter parade. He had the broadest smile on his face, though, but he knew. If all goes well, harder matches, tougher finals, lie ahead. He got more of a game from Wigan, really.