ADAM CRAFTON at Wembley
Defence wins the day after Mahrez hits route one goal
RIYAD MAHREZ pointed to the heavens last night in memory of Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha after scoring Manchester City’s winner. Mahrez, who joined City from Leicester in the summer, scored a sixth-minute goal to beat Tottenham and send City back to the top of the Premier League. After scoring, Mahrez saluted Srivaddhanaprabha, who died in a helicopter crash at the King Power Stadium on Saturday.
EVER so quietly, Manchester City have become rather good at defending. You may not have noticed. Not many have. Everyone is so focused on their aesthetic qualities, this new resilience is passing under the radar. Yet it is there, all right.
This was a sixth consecutive Premier League clean sheet, equalling their previous best run in 2015. To achieve it, they had to repel Tottenham chasing an equaliser for 84 minutes, plus added time. Tottenham are a good team, with good forwards. Protecting a single goal advantage against them, certainly away from home, is not easy.
Yet City survived. They maintained an unbeaten run that has lasted 16 matches in this competition, with just six goals conceded in that time.
Indeed, they have only surrendered one of the last 63 matches in which they have taken the lead — against Manchester United last April. That match messed up a great many of City’s consecutive sequences. And they have tightened up since with one player, centre half Aymeric Laporte yet to finish on a losing side in a league game since making his debut on January 31.
Of course, they needed to ride their luck. Erik Lamela missed a fabulous chance after 80 minutes, when set up by the returning Dele Alli. He was in yards at space but blasted offer — although in his defence the ball did bobble at the wrong time.
These were tense moments for City as they saw out the game with Alli, in particular, making a huge difference. It would have been very different had City not squandered an excellent chance to go two clear after 64 minutes when Bernardo Silva, fed David Silva in the penalty area. Somehow, he stumbled and missed his kick, the ball falling to Raheem Sterling whose shot was blocked on the line.
Inescapably, though, this is the second game Tottenham have lost at home this season to title rivals, following the defeat against Liverpool in September. The talk of the fastest break from the blocks hides these bumps, which look increasingly significant when considering the league table. City on top — and doing the boring stuff well now, too. That is a worry.
Much was made of the NFLbattered pitch but it was the empty seats that first caught the eye. Almost the entire top tier empty, and not due to crowd limits, either. It seems the locals are finally tiring of their nomadic existence, or maybe simply the uncertainty that surrounds it.
Either way it was unfortunate because this was a decent game played in what were, by modern standards, trying conditions.
The caveat needs to be applied because to any player familiar with pre-Premier League standard surfaces, complaints about this one will have been met with a shrug. It was dreadful compared to what we are used to now, considering that today’s players tour a succession of billiard tables, and would be appalled to be wrongfooted by a divot that has not been seamlessly replaced at half-time. The Baseball Ground circa 1972 it was not. There was grass, mostly. There wasn’t even much sand.
Did it affect the play? Well, City certainly seemed to go a little longer than usual from the start, but not much. It helps that goalkeeper Ederson was famed for the length and precision of his kicking when in Portugal. It was his direct approach that wrong-footed Tottenham early and led to City taking the lead after six minutes. That, and some woeful defending from Kieran Trippier.
He has been exceptional for Tottenham and England these last 12 months but this was an off night — certainly an off minute. To begin with, he won the header from Ederson’s kick, but misdirected it — back towards goal but falling short of his own goalkeeper Hugo Lloris and setting up a problematic foot race with Sterling. Trippier lost that and was then skinned by Sterling again when he took up a recovering position. Now close the byline, Sterling cut the ball back expertly into the path of Riyad Mahrez, whose finish was
smart and clinical. In the light of the tragic news from Leicester, it was perhaps fitting for a player who was part of the success that Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha brought to the city.
A minute later and City could have been two clear. Sergio Aguero flicked the ball out to Sterling and moved well for the return pass, which he fired into the side-netting. In the 28th minute, sloppy defending from Tottenham culminated in a Mahrez shot which Lloris saved.
Yet with City failing to take advantage of an obvious superiority, they remained vulnerable to mistakes, and Tottenham should have made better use of that. In the ninth minute, Sterling attempted a careless, blind backheel in the centre circle which set Tottenham up on the counter-attack. The ball was played into Kane and instead of taking on John Stones, he tried his luck from range, the ball catching Ederson off his line but dipping slightly too late to find its target.
Soon after Benjamin Mendy let the ball slide under his boot, allowing Moussa Sissoko to speed away down the right. It was another good chance, but the final ball wasted it.
In the 34th minute, Kane met a Lloris goal-kick, sending the ball out to Erik Lamela, who returned it with a smart pass. Kane’s first touch, however, was lousy and Ederson was able to save at his feet. To his credit, he chose not to give the pitch a dirty look, or maybe Tottenham’s players are under orders given their recent troubles with accommodation.