CITY ARE ROLLING TO HISTORY
Suddenly the Quadruple seems feasible after this mismatch
IF either Oxford or Cambridge are leading the Boat Race by 10 lengths when they row past Craven Cottage soon after the start next Sunday, the contest will still not be as uneven as the one that unfolded on a balmy day by the banks of the Thames at Fulham’ s home yesterday, when Pep Guardiola and his all-conquering Manchester City team paid a visit.
City won their seventh Premier League game in a row at a canter. It was 2-0 but it could have been as many as they wanted. They played the second half mainly without urgency because there was no need for any. They had the game won inside half an hour.
The rest of the match was an exercise in energy preservation for greater tests that lie ahead as their season heads for a stunning climax. The win over Scott Parker’s struggling side, now all but consigned to relegation after a solitary season in the top flight, took City back to the top of the table, at least until Liverpool play Tottenham this afternoon.
Guardiola’s team have seven more League games to play and with Kevin de Bruyne back in the side after injury and Fernandinho returning as a substitute, it is possible they will not drop points in any of them. City are that well drilled. City are that confident. City are that good.
At the end of the match their fans threw blue flares on to the pitch and sang the name of their longserving club secretary and life president, Bernard Halford, who died last week. It was an echo of the past but this is a team that is on the brink of outdoing anything this club has achieved before.
City have a maximum of 14 games left in all competitions now and suddenly the Quadruple has metamorphosed from an impossible dream into something that actually seems feasible.
Liverpool will have something to say about that in the Premier League, of course. Spurs will not roll over in the Champions League, either, to say nothing of Barcelona or Juventus, but City, bidding to become the first team since Manchester United 10 years ago to win Premier Leagues back to back, are looking ominously good.
Bernardo Silva was the pick of their players here. He has played so well this season that he must feature alongside Virgil van Dijk, Raheem Sterling and Sergio Aguero in conversations about who will be crowned the Footballer of the Year. City are competing for trophies on every level.
Guardiola was pleased City had breezed through the encounter without any alarms. When he assessed the challenges they had faced on this visit to London, he mentioned the early kick-off, the sunny weather and the effects of the international break. Mere mortals do not pose as much of a threat.
‘We’re privileged to be in all the competitions almost at the beginning of April and to fight for the title,’ the City boss had said before the game. ‘It’s an incredible experience. For the next one-and-ahalf or two months together there is no time for regret.
‘We put everything we have into every single game, every single minute and every competition, to see how far we get. It’s still in our hands. We win all games and we’ll be champions. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy.’
Fulham fans were nervous about facing City anyway but they feared even more for their side when they saw their teamsheet an hour before kick off. Aleksandar Mitrovic, Tim Ream and Jean-Michael Seri, three of the better players in a team that continues to look out of its depth, were out injured. City, meanwhile, with De Bruyne back in the side, were almost at full strength.
It took only five minutes for Fulham’s fears to be justified. Timothy Fosu-Mensah gave the ball away carelessly on the edge of his own area, De Bruyne moved it on quickly to Aguero, who passed it to Bernardo Silva. He cut inside and drilled a low left-foot shot past Sergio Rico into the corner of the net.
Craven Cottage hummed to the sound of collective groans. Fulham continued to give the ball away with alarming regularity and City are good enough to punish opponents without the gift of generosity. They peppered the Fulham goal with shots. They had 12 in the first 18 minutes. It took some desperate last-ditch defending to keep them out.
Gallows humour took hold quickly among the home fans. They began cheering every successful pass their team made. And for a short while Fulham actually seemed to have played their way through the storm. Then they got careless again and City punished them.
This time it was Joe Bryan who gave the ball away when he was not under pressure. Bernardo Silva pounced on the loose pass and gave it straight to Aguero, who sidestepped a challenge, took a couple o f paces a nd lifted t he bal l delicately beyond Rico. It was his
19th League goal of the season. City are a fine side but for both goals Fulham had only themselves to blame. There were occasional moments of levi ty amid the pummelling. A few minutes into the second half, De Bruyne cut in from the byline on the right and slid a precise ball into the path of Nicolas Otamendi on the edge of the area. He applied the finish of a centre-half from a less cultured age and lifted the ball so high it bounced on the roof.
That, at least, elicited some cheers from the home support.
Aguero was withdrawn after an hour. De Bruyne came off with 15 minutes to go. There was no threat here. They nearly scored a third goal 10 minutes from the end when Kyle Walker burst into the box, ran on to a pass from Sterling and crashed his shot against a post.
Maybe goal difference will matter at the end of the season but if City remain as dominant as they were here it won’t.