SUPER CITY LIFT THIRD LEAGUE CUP IN A ROW
Valiant Villa can’t halt City winning their third League Cup in succession
THIS went exactly as expected, but better than expected, too. Manchester City won, as was widely predicted, but Aston Villa were not embarrassed or swept aside.
The last team to play City in a cup final, Watford, went down by six. The last time Villa reached a domestic cup final, against Arsenal in 2015, they lost by four.
There were fears of a similar outcome here. Bookmakers had City the same price to win by seven as Villa were to win by one.
So, given the circumstances, a single-goal reverse didn’t seem to carry the same pain of cup-final defeat for the vanquished claret end of Wembley.
They cheered their players at the conclusion almost as if they were the victors.
Maybe that’s a sorry indictment of the growing gulf in English football; maybe it was just sheer relief.
Certainly, when City went two goals clear after 30 minutes, there was a gloomy silence hanging over Villa’s fans. Their team hadn’t trailed in this competition all season. Yet would they, like Watford before them, be taken apart?
What saved them was not some tactical masterstroke, or spirited revival. It was a mishap, a misstep, the sort of random event that too often befalls John Stones.
Which is why, whatever the future holds for City this summer, a defensive upgrade has to be a top priority.
They cannot continue like this, dominating games yet always vulnerable to the most random factors, such as Stones’ inexplicable fall minutes before half-time.
City were two goals clear by that point, with Villa reduced to ever more desperate interventions at the back. Yet, somehow, Stones undermined that supremacy and allowed a reinvigorated Villa to go into the second half just a goal behind.
It is astonishing how often these little accidents happen to him. He was tracking a through ball, one eye on Anwar El Ghazi, another on Mbwana Samatta, and just seemed to trip over his own feet.
El Ghazi sprinted through, suddenly unchallenged, and hit a lovely cross which Samatta converted with a powerful diving header. All of a sudden, Villa were back in it.
They shouldn’t have been. After a bright start which saw El Ghazi head narrowly over from an Ahmed Elmohamady centre, the game had settled into a familiar pattern; Villa defending in deep banks, City probing artfully around them.
Sergio Aguero had a header from an Ilkay Gundogan cross go wide after nine minutes and then, with 20 gone, City struck.
Phil Foden, a deserved man of the match, was causing Matt Targett all manner of problems on the right as Rodri picked him out with a sweet diagonal ball.
The young Englishman could see Aguero arriving and directed the ball to him with a beautifully-weighted header. The talismanic City striker was never going to waste such an opportunity and finished smartly past Villa keeper Orjan Nyland.
Foden could have added to the total with a curling shot on 27 minutes, after being picked out cross-field again, this time by Oleksandr Zinchenko.
Then City scored their second, with a straightforward set-piece that seemed to catch Villa half asleep. Gundogan whipped the ball in from the right and Rodri met it with little opposition.
Getting outplayed by City is no sin, but the very least that Villa boss Dean Smith could have hoped for was that his team would compete, would jump.
Foden was involved again in the 36th minute when he cut the ball back for Raheem Sterling, whose shot was blocked on its way to goal by Tyrone Mings.
The young man had a fierce shot flash across the face of the target shortly after half-time, too.
Then, after 57 minutes, Pep Guardiola paid Aston Villa his biggest compliment, introducing Kevin De Bruyne from the bench, albeit one of the Belgian’s first touches involved stepping on the ball, slipping, and almost letting Villa in on the counter. Maybe it’s catching.
It would be wrong to suggest that, despite Smith’s side’s revival, the second half saw the teams slug it out. It followed the same pattern as the first, City in possession, Villa in retreat.
Aguero took a fearful battering and Marvelous Nakamba was lucky to stay on the field.
His tackle on the Argentine was reckless, two-footed and lacking control. All that saved him from a red card was that his studs were not up and he did not go over the ball.
Aguero was not so lucky the next time. A quite exquisite move ended with Bernardo Silva crossing for the Argentinian to meet the ball with a far-post volley.
It hit the side-netting but Aguero also rattled his knee against the attempted block. It was an accident, but he left the field hobbling and bleeding to several crass attempts to quicken his exit by referee Lee Mason and some Villa players.
Yet as stoppage time approached, the lead remained a single goal —
and every team has a puncher’s chance from set-pieces. So it proved.
Villa won a corner and Bjorn Engels’ header was pushed on to the post by Claudio Bravo.
When five minutes of time was added, it was greeted more enthusiastically at the Villa end than at City’s.
Indeed, to see City getting 11 men behind the ball, and being reduced to hoofed clearances was also a win of sorts, but not one that gets a team a trophy.
A fourth Carabao Cup win for City next season would equal the record set by Liverpool in 1984, but so much is unknown about the club’s immediate future.
Football’s, too, given that one of the topics for the Government’s emergency Cobra meeting today is whether large assemblies must be outlawed to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Maybe the call on that could have been made before more than 82,000 people were allowed to gather for the biggest English domestic football match of the year so far.
By the time this season is out, stopping City might be the least of anyone’s worries.