No 2 BRAVO IS THE WEAK LINK AT CITY

GoAlkEEPERS are important, their understudies equally so. Manchester City would not have won the league under Pep Guardiola had they not bought Ederson and the prospect of facing liverpool without him on Sunday is potentially game-changing. Guardiola won’t have it, but Claudio Bravo is significantly inferior. His ridiculous charge from goal against Atalanta on Wednesday ended in his dismissal and could easily have cost the game. Some thought Bravo made minimal contact with forward Josip Ilicic but that misses the point. The way he rushed out was always likely to offer the opportunity for collision and, even had he succeeded in taking the ball cleanly, he was still diving at the feet of the player outside the penalty area. Had he handled it, he could have been sent off just the same. It was rotten goalkeeping and liverpool will see Bravo (right) as a potential point of weakness if he starts at Anfield. It has been much the same at West Ham, where Manuel Pellegrini’s decision to ditch Adrian and introduce Roberto as No 2 this season has been exposed as complete folly by the injury to lukasz Fabianski. on the day Fabianski was injured — September 28, at Bournemouth — West Ham were in fifth place. They are now 13th and have picked up one point from 12 in the matches Roberto has started. What was the sixth-tightest defence in the league is now the 12th and with Fabianski out until the new year he could return to a relegation battle. West Ham are now 10 points off Chelsea in fourth place but only five off Southampton in 18th with a run of games against Tottenham, Chelsea, Wolves and Arsenal after the international break. The understudy should not be quite as a good as the first choice but never a drop off a cliff.