PEP GETS HIS REVENGE
Leaders beat Leicester to banish memories of last season’s humiliation
THE goals were celebrated with the cool air of a side who had arrived with a point to prove against opponents who made no secret of how elementary it had been putting four goals past them in the depths of last winter.
It was a different story this time: another contribution to the gathering narrative of Manchester City as a side without equal. Their eightpoint lead is built on the bedrock of 40 goals. Of all the other top-flight sides, only rivals Manchester United have more than 25.
It was a test, for sure. Fully 45 minutes before the game began, Pep Guardiola was sitting in his dug-out in an empty stadium peering at coach Rodolfo Borrell’s team sheet. He was no doubt contemplating the catastrophe that befell him here a little less than a year ago, when City were lucky to escape with a 4-2 defeat.
The high-pace exploitation of their high defensive line that day was a career low for him and without doubt the nadir of his 18 months at City’s helm. ‘The way they play is so complicated for the way we want to defend,’ he reflected last night. ‘It’s always complicated.’
As significant as the quality of the goals yesterday was City’s resilience in weathering a difficult opening. A defence already missing Nicolas Otamendi, who has been outstanding, was without John Stones from the half-hour mark yet did not yield — even though Eliaquim Mangala, very much the last choice, was called upon.
The early minutes suggested it just might be the game that tripped up City. A calf injury had kept out Vincent Kompany since January. It initially looked a questionable decision to make this the place to restore him.
The game was in its third minute when the impressive Vicente Iborra delivered an immediate test, threading a ball inside Fernandinho for Jamie Vardy, who had ended that last encounter with his first Leicester hat-trick. Struggling to make the ground to intercept, Kompany swung a boot and took the forward’s legs from under him. Stones might have made a covering tackle, so the defender was justifiably spared a red card. But Leicester manager Claude Puel felt yellow was inadequate. ‘Jamie [Vardy] is the last striker,’ he said. ‘The other defender cannot [cover] him.’
Kompany then almost navigated the ball into his own net after Riyad Mahrez burst into the right-hand side of the City area to cross. Even City’s offensive work seemed to lack its usual synchronicity.
Kevin De Bruyne and Kyle Walker gesticulated at each other after the Belgian’s ball for the defender sailed into touch. But gradually the leaders found their level and left Puel’s new charges struggling to keep up with the machine-gun rapidity of their passing.
There was not a huge degree of variety about it before half-time, in all truth. But that did not make City any less evasive as they swept across the pitch; left to right; De Bruyne to David Silva to their main penalty-box threat Leroy Sane.
Sane’s delivery lacked accuracy at times. The volume of balls to the near post limited the chances for Gabriel Jesus, preferred to Sergio Aguero. With a little more purpose, Raheem Sterling might have fastened on to one of Sane’s better crosses. Silva fired over the bar after a Sterling lay-off.
But the breakthrough goal made light of all the toil when it arrived a minute before half-time — the product of ‘a million passes,’ Guardiola said. Ten, actually, in an interlocking move which finished up with a tap-in by Jesus.
There was an equivalent effortlessness about the goal that sealed the points. From a position of defensive danger, in which Harry Maguire headed a ball palmed out
by Ederson against the upright, City streamed ahead into space. A dozen or so touches this time concluded with Sane laying back for De Bruyne, who rolled the ball under the studs of his right boot and smashed it into the top lefthand corner of the net with his left. A masterclass in the value of being two-footed. Though Jesus almost made it three from Walker’s subsequent cross, Leicester’s own contribution should be factored in. They were organised. Iborra, Wilfred Ndidi and Mahrez all threatened. Vardy looked sharp. Yet City were durable, too.
Fabian Delph was impressive at full-back, where he has become an excellent deputy for Benjamin Mendy.
And when Leicester thought they had halved City’s two-goal lead, with Vardy tapping towards an empty net after Ndidi’s through ball had been deflected into his path, Walker raced in to make the covering clearance.
Victory of an ominous kind for those clubs who are increasingly trailing in the middle distance.