Best is yet to come, says Pep
Rafa’s game plan slows up the champions until Walker’s bolt from blue
PEP GUARDIOLA warned his rivals that Manchester City are inching towards their ‘best condition’ after their win over Newcastle.
‘Step by step we will get our best condition,’ he said. ‘To start with 10 points from 12 is a good start for us and I am so satisfied.’
Raheem Sterling and Kyle Walker got the goals but star man Leroy Sane was left out of the squad and Guardiola added: ‘It was my decision. We have six strikers.’
WHEN Kyle Walker lined up his strike on 52 minutes, Martin Dubravka might not have been quite expecting what followed. After all, Walker hadn’t scored since November 2015.
A shot worthy of Sergio Aguero in power and accuracy wasn’t on the agenda. Nevertheless, that’s what came and Dubravka found himself beaten and Walker engulfed by celebrating colleagues.
Here’s another stat to ponder on top of Walker’s irregular scoring record. He cost around £45million. Newcastle United’s starting XI, give or take a loan fee here and there, cost around £30m. That’s a little more than the fee paid for the cheapest player in City’s starting XI, Gabriel Jesus.
And that Walker goal was all that separated them. So, with ten minutes to go, when Rafa Benitez finally switched from a back five to 4-4-1-1, ends seemed to justify the means. No points for Newcastle, of course. Still they will feel a minor moral victory was recorded
We had been invited to celebrate ten years of Sheik Mansour’s takeover of Manchester City and ten years of Vincent Kompany, who actually signed just before Abu Dhabi’s elite took over.
He was sent on for what seemed like a gesture of appreciation in the final two minutes. So it wasn’t as though Newcastle were exactly battering City in desperate fashion at that stage. Pep Guardiola was relaxed enough. Still, only one goal separated these teams, one backed by a Middle Eastern state the other by a wealthy British businessman but small fry globally. And one who has a sharp eye on the bottom line.
Mike Ashley took over Newcastle 11 years ago. You would have marked them down as the club with the bigger pulling power at the time but if that seems like another age, it is because it was.
Nowadays, it shouldn’t really be a contest. That it was, up to a point, was the entire reasoning behind the Benitez approach. Of course, it’s easier to justify away at City, one of the world’s elite teams, than it is at home against a Chelsea team finding their way. But this is modern Premier League football. At times it resembles an FA Cup tie against a lower league team
You would think that any game plan was pretty much busted if your defender and captain decided to play a crucial assist to the opposition in the eighth minute. Indeed, it looked shot here almost before it began. Jamaal Lascelles, dropped last weekend after reports of a training ground fight — officially he was injured — had returned.
And though there had been an early warning sign when Riyad Mahrez shot wide in the fifth minute, Fernandinho penetrating the Newcastle midfield with a superb pass, Newcastle were solid enough in the initial exchanges.
City looked set for a long afternoon of probing. At times, Benjamin Mendy and Walker played so high it was 2-4-4: Guardiola turning English football on its head.
Still, Benitez can be a tactical master, though if your skipper, on the edge of his penalty area and under negligible pressure, chooses to pass the ball straight to Mendy, it really does not matter how much of a whizz you are on the chalkboard. To be fair, from there City were clinical. Mendy fed Raheem Sterling on the left wing. Inevitably he cut inside — as he did to score on the opening weekend of the season at Arsenal. His strike was just as good, leaving Dubravka little chance. It was Mendy’s fourth assist of the season already.
You feared for Newcastle. In this mood, would City score five or six? How could Newcastle possibly persevere for another 82 minutes?
Sergio Aguero shot just wide on 16 minutes and on 19 he played a super pass for Jesus, who turned inside his defender and shot too close to Dubravka.
At this stage, Newcastle were almost non-participants. When Ki Sung-yueng took a rare re free kick on 20 minutes he simply kicked it into touch, h, like a rugby team try- ing to gain yards.
But maybe it was Benitez’s version of rope-a-dope. For complacency settled upon City. Their attacking play became slack.
So it was that Newcasastle played out quickly on 30 minutes and when Kenedy nedy did superbly well to bring the ball down on the edge of the box, City were a little exposed. The Brazilian quickly played the ball out to Solomon Rondon, who in turn struck a beauti-
fully weighted cross. Far across the pitch, wing back DeAndre Yedlin sprinted in from the right to join the fray. He arrived just in time to steer the ball past Ederson for 1-1. Mendy was nowhere to be seen.
One thing we learned from Amazon’s Manchester City documentary was that Guardiola’s half-time team talk was likely to be as emotive as it was tactical. And laden with Anglo-Saxon expletives.
Certainly City returned with a heightened degree of purpose. However, the source of the winning goal was unexpected.
City were plugging away, working the ball across the pitch, and in doing so pulled Paul Dummett out of position. Still, even though there was plenty of space for Walker to size up his strike, from 30 yards out it seemed ambitious. Yet he hit it with such ferocity, through a forest of legs that it beat Dubravka at the far post. It was an almighty strike.
Jesus had a goal disallowed for offside in the 55th minute. On the hour, Dubravka saved from Fernandinho, put through by Aguero. When the ball rebounded to David Silva, the Slovak parried again. Dubravka also denied Silva later but City were still not at their best.