PEP’S GOT CITY PURRING AGAIN
Ominous for title rivals as champions hit their stride
His first FA Community shield will not figure in the upper echelons when Pep Guardiola settles into his rocking chair with a pencil and paper for the final reckoning.
The prize will probably not make his Top 20 when the time comes to chart his mammoth haul of prizes, but he will have taken great satisfaction from 90 minutes spent basking in the London sun in his baggy cream tee-shirt.
Guardiola would have turned up at Wembley searching for signs from his Manchester City team. He would have hoped to find desire in the eyes of those players who amassed 100 points and 106 goals in the Premier League last season.
it is a decade since any team successfully defended the title. in fact, Chelsea, hapless Wembley victims on this occasion, have become experts in turning the task into a complete shambles.
Guardiola will have sought proof that no-one had lost their appetite after a summer at the World Cup and evidence that others are emerging to push them and keep momentum rolling. Here it was, pretty much all of the above — albeit against a team with their best players missing and clearly lots of groundwork still to be done by Maurizio sarri.
The new Chelsea manager, just over three weeks into the job, wants to see his team play with speed and adventure akin to Manchester City but they are a long way from the same levels of fluency and understanding.
sergio Aguero looked sleek and keen as he erased the memories of what was a most miserable World Cup. He helped himself to a goal in each half. The first took his City tally to 200 and there might have been a hat-trick without a strong performance from his Argentina team-mate Willy Caballero in goal for Chelsea.
Aguero took the man- of-thematch award from the sponsors and yet those who were at Wembley will recall this as the day they saw Phil Foden begin to transform his huge potential into something more tangible.
At 18, Foden dazzled and received a standing ovation when he was replaced, having succumbed to cramp, 15 minutes from time.
His jinking runs punctured holes in Chelsea’s defence, his touch was sure and his passes were crisp and accurate, like the one which found Aguero on the edge of the penalty area for the opening goal.
Aguero feinted to go one way, twisted the other and was afforded the time to slam the ball low past Antonio Rudiger’s attempted block and the dive of Caballero.
Another explosive change of pace from Foden in the first half left Jorginho trailing as he cut through the centre and found Riyad Mahrez in space.
Mahrez was betrayed by his touch, which offered a reminder of the technical polish which is now the norm at City. When a player fails to stop the ball with precision and poise, it simply jars with the rhythm.
Foden and Bernardo silva, who started out in the roles normally occupied by David silva and Kevin de Bruyne, were sublime, showing such vision and awareness of others around them and maturity and confidence in their decisions.
Bernardo was shifted out wide after the interval to equal effect and received special praise from Guardiola for his display, which the manager thought proved him to be ahead of the other creative players in his squad.
Foden picked out another Aguero run early in the second half and the striker skipped around the goalkeeper only to slice a shot into the side-netting.
it was Bernardo who created his second goal. The striker dashed away from Rudiger and behind David Luiz to apply a low finish to a perfectly weighed pass.
Chelsea wilted in the heat where City did not but they do have players still to return, including N’Golo Kante and Eden Hazard, their two most important under Antonio Conte.
Even so, sarri had plenty to occupy his thoughts as he paced the touchline chewing furiously on the gum he has chosen to replace the cigarettes.
Jorginho was the signing he wanted above all others, the key to setting the tempo and dictating the style he craves.
He was stolen from under City’s noses but the Brazil-born italian international was hustled out of his stride as he took risks on the ball, sitting deep in midfield, on the toes of his central defenders.
One misplaced pass allowed Leroy sane to burst clear midway through the first half and Caballero dashed from his line to smother the chance.
Up front, 17-year- old Callum Hudson-Odoi flickered and threatened from the left and forced an error from Claudio Bravo with a shot which skidded off the turf and surprised the ‘keeper.
Bravo escaped another misjudgement, this time beaten by the bounce of a long punt forward from Marcos Alonso, and Chelsea rarely looked capable of testing him with anything more deliberate.
Alvaro Morata offered nothing to suggest a change of manager and a change of shirt number are about to bring him a change of fortune in blue. He started his
Chelsea career by missing a penalty in a shoot-out in last year’s Community Shield before his first season drifted into disappointment.
Here, he went off in a blur of substitutions as the FA Cup winners were saved from the realms of humiliation by Caballero’s defiance.
There would be no hat-trick for Aguero but there was an ominous purr to the champions.