City’s character, and slice of luck, could be enough

KEVIN de Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan had laid it on the line with brutal honesty for City.

Straight after the Blues had crashed out against Lyon in Lisbon in August, a bitterly disappointed De Bruyne - usually the perfect diplomat - could not hide his feelings.

“Different year, same stuff!” he barked at the TV interviewer.

His hard words posed the question - will City ever break free from the cycle of bad luck, bad finishing and even worse mistakes that haunted them in this competition?

And on the eve of the trip to Borussia Dortmund, their other midfield inspiration Gundogan - the only man in the team who knows what it takes to get to the Champions League final - laid it bare.

He had been as straight and brutal as De Bruyne after the Tottenham flop in the 2019 quarter-finals, effectively saying that the side had to show they had guts as well as flair.

That has been the only question mark hovering over this beautifully talented City team - have they got the ‘attitude and personality’, as Gundogan put it last night, to dig deep when things go against them?

Before Riyad Mahrez’s penalty and a Phil Foden stunner turned around the second leg in the Westfalenstadion, the last time City went behind and won, in either the Champions League or Premier League, was against Leicester, 16 months ago.

Of course, that alarming stat is tempered somewhat by the fact that the Blues rarely go behind, but it does tot up to the last 11 occasions.

So when they went behind, Gundogan’s challenge, to find out as to whether they have that character, to drag themselves up by the bootstraps and fight back. And for an hour, it looked like a rewind to Lyon, to Tottenham - and to the problems which dogged them last season.

The pattern of the game was even 2019-20 all over.

City dominated the match, and had control, but conceded from one of Dortmund’s few chances.

Guardiola was under no illusions about what went wrong last season, when the Blues ended up with just the Carabao Cup to show for their efforts.

The Blues were too profligate in the opposition box, and too generous in their own - the crazy stats in the games against Tottenham, who scored from most of their shots, but did not concede from a squillion City attempts, told the whole story of a disappointing campaign.

And so it was at the Westfalenstadion. City controlled the game, but Dortmund scored.

At moments like that, doubt creeps in, the troubles of the past can flood back, and those worries become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The importance of fighting back in this manner, scoring emphatically from the penalty spot and then seeing the youngest Blue on the team have the confidence and technique to drill in the killer second, cannot be underestimated.

Finally City have shown they can come from behind and win, even if it isn’t at Cheltenham in the FA Cup!

They also had another large dose of luck, after seeing Jude Bellingham’s goal ruled out by a hasty referee in the first leg.

The VAR took an age to review the penalty decision against Emre Can last night, and the officials would have had a ‘letter of the law’ defence if they had overturned it.

They didn’t, and the tide turned. Such luck, and the character the Blues showed, can turn a brilliant team into Champions League winners.