Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Pep’s champions still in top gear ... but Tuchel’s chasers look like they’re already running out of gas
PANIC at the pumps turned all roads to Stamford Bridge into a hazardous slalom, but the message from Pep Guardiola remains the same.
In the title race, write off Manchester City at your peril. Like desperate motorists queueing for petrol – fuel if you think it’s over.
And anyone who thought City would stroll along Fulham Broadway, tug their forelocks and roll over were given a timely reminder: form is temporary, class is permanent. In a country
run by charlatans and chancers in denial about the damage Brexit is doing at filling stations and on supermarket shelves, at least City owner Sheikh Mansour is unlikely ever to find himself down to his last jerry-can of unleaded in the boot.
And when energy prices go
through the roof this winter, Pep can afford to leave the central heating on.
Don’t panic? City were 14th last November and still took the chequered flag with 12 points to spare.
In Pepland, there are no bumps in the road – only contours.
For all the dizzying cast of talents Guardiola has assembled, and all the No.1 hits in his back catalogue, at face value there appears to be a lead singer missing from the band.
By missing out on Harry Kane and Cristiano Ronaldo in the latesummer game of stick-or-twist, City look like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger, T-Rex without Marc Bolan, the Four Seasons without Frankie Valli.
But if Gabriel Jesus is not the answer, he’s a valid question mark.
If a poacher with 85 goals in 118 starts is not an adequate replacement for Sergio Aguero, who is?
If Jesus blows hot and cold, and
his third goal of the season bobbled into the corner apologetically, it was no more than City deserved.
Just like the Champions League Final last May, they were more ambitious, more enterprising, more interested in setting the agenda than suffocating it.
On this evidence, City may yet be able to sustain a defence of their title and another tilt at the Champions League without replenishing the macular hole in Guardiola’s 20-20 vision of fantasy football.
Chelsea added £97.5million Romelu Lukaku – 25 goals a season waiting to happen – to an
already powerful hand, but he was isolated for 45 minutes and tethered expertly when Thomas Tuchel’s hermits finally ventured beyond the halfway line.
BT Sport pundit Rio Ferdinand identified Lukaku as Chelsea’s missing jigsaw piece, saying: “He’s been immense – he’s an animal and that’s what you need.
“Chelsea were looking for a focal point up front and he’s that guy. Lukaku went away under a cloud at Manchester United and he’s come back an animal, someone you can count on to win you trophies.”
But with the service patchier than tanker deliveries to petrol
stations, Lukaku’s touch deserted him this time.
City dominated possession and territory, Chelsea were happy to pick their pockets on the break until they fell behind – and Guardiola enjoyed a rare success against the nearest thing to his bogey side on the planet.
Among eight defeats against the Blues in his managerial career – more than any other side – was the most damaging of all.
Guardiola will never live down City’s Champions League Final defeat in Porto four months ago until he brings the holy grail to the Etihad.
And Chelsea fans taunted the
visitors by wielding inflatable European Cup trophies and frequent reminders from the stands:
“Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that.”
But as that very familiar blue moon rose over the Premier League’s upper slopes, for City there was an element of sweet revenge for Antonio Rudiger’s awful challenge on Kevin De Bruyne in the Champions League Final.
And in the title race, it was Chelsea who looked likelier to run out of gas.