Foden stokes up title bandwagon
Nervy start then Pep’s men ease Bees off track
OFF the naughty step and back into the light. Phil Foden might have tested Pep Guardiola’s patience with his little night out, but goals at tricky moments have a habit of soothing those friction burns.
It wasn’t a classic of a strike, nor much of a memory maker. No. But it was nice, one of those controlled volleys from short range that looks easier than it is. And important, too. Important for him, important for Manchester City.
They had just started to feel a bit of a pinch, believe it or not. Brentford were pushing, forcing Ederson into one good save and Joao Cancelo into another off his own line in successive minutes, so there was pressure in this least expected of places.
With that heat, came the cosy narrative in the form of Foden, who had been brought in from exile along with Jack Grealish after their trip to a nightclub prior to Christmas. That cost them starts in each of the past two games, so there was perhaps a predictability in one of the pair making the difference. That it was so necessary, so useful, is something of a surprise.
We have become rather accustomed to City mauling all in sight that it almost sounded an alarm when they failed to notch four for the first time in four games.
Perhaps that is how we can quantify a crisis now in this most dominant of sides, who even on a sluggish evening were able to progress to a 10th straight win, growing their advantage to eight points over Chelsea and extending it to nine beyond Liverpool. Mind the gap? It’s impossible to miss it. And quite possibly impossible to bridge, too.
If we are to find fault it is that at Brentford they stayed in the lower gears. Kevin De Bruyne was sharp, conducting his patterns in that exceptional way of his, and Foden was an offside call away from two goals. But it was flat, a little too difficult, a little too easy to see why they still need to bring in another elite striker. Yet a win is a win, and with it they had a 36th for the calendar year — an extension of a top-flight record for one of the strongest sides ever assembled in this country.
Guardiola made four changes, the most eye-catching coming from his apparent forgiveness of Grealish and Foden. With that pair starting on the back of detention, there were also recalls for Nathan Ake and Gabriel Jesus and the requirement for Fernandinho, at 36, to squeeze out a second game in the space of three days.
Riyad Mahrez, Raheem Sterling,
Oleksandr Zinchenko and Ilkay Gundogan stepped down.
Thomas Frank’s hands were bound tightly by injuries and the circumstances of Covid. With no fewer than 11 first-team players out, compounded by Bryan Mbeumo’s failure to recover from a hamstring injury, he was down to the marrow of bare bones. They didn’t even have a full bench — not ideal for stopping a runaway train.
But give them credit. They were trailing by the 16th minute, and yet across the preceding quarter of an hour they caused more bother than most, even with half a dozen men reluctant to step into City’s half. Indeed, from that crouch, Brentford made a decent early habit of springing into difficult counters.
The first of those followed a rare misstep from Ruben Dias, who gave up possession and a halfchance for Frank Onyeka. he snatched at a shot and caused no great bother to ederson, but it was a warning of sorts.
As was Mathias Jensen’s punt from halfway that cleared City’s keeper but was never on a convincing path for goal.
Far more dangerous were the back-to-back scrambles on City’s goal-line a moment later.
ederson needed to save well with the initial opportunity after Dias blocked Yoane Wissa’s cross only to deflect the ball towards his own net. Good defending and good keeping.
From the subsequent corner, Cancelo cleared off his own line to keep out a Wissa header. It was becoming quite tense.
And then, in the very next phase of play, Foden had his redemptive moment, meeting a clever cross from De Bruyne with a low roller of a volley past Alvaro Fernandez.
The VAR had a look but ethan Pinnock’s back foot was playing Foden on so he had his fifth goal of the campaign.
Brentford continued to fight, and in one instance a little too literally. In retaliation for an aggressive shoulder from Fernandinho on Ivan Toney, the latter then appeared to stamp on the former a minute later. Referee David Coote let it go.
By the close of the half, City had failed to land another meaningful blow, nor another decent shot for that matter. They had been mostly comfortable, but nowhere close to their potential.
Foden opened the second period by glancing a De Bruyne cross wide, then had a second header correctly disallowed for offside after a good delivery from Jesus.
De Bruyne cracked against a post from the edge of the area as they pushed for a stronger lead, and at that stage news of Chelsea conceding a late equaliser filtered through, so there was a cheer anyway. Likewise from the home bunch when Aymeric Laporte had a header disallowed for offside.
For all that, Brentford were never out of it. But that was a hell of a train they were trying to catch, even on a slow evening.