City Watch: City humbled at The Emirates

There’s never a dull moment as a Manchester City fan at the moment, and us as fans really don’t know what version of the team we’re going to get.

Off the back of a great win against Chelsea last weekend, where new signing, Omar Marmoush, started to show his quality and Erling Haaland looked to be regaining his form, it only seemed natural that City would use this game as a springboard going into arguably our most difficult month of the season.

The Blues just about progressed to the next round of the Champions League after a 3-1 win against Club Brugge on Wednesday last week. The poor run of form means that although we’ve qualified for the next round, the team will have to go through a play off to reach the Round of 16 and join the already qualified teams.

Manchester City’s opponents for this play off game were also drawn last week, and we will play Real Madrid, continuing the rivalry that has sparked over the past few years. This tough tie adds to an already difficult February, where the Blues have yet to play Newcastle, Liverpool at Tottenham, having already played Arsenal on the weekend.

That brings me quite nicely onto the weekend’s game. I was down in North London for the game on Sunday, and quite honestly, like I said before, didn’t know what to expect. I was more confident when the line ups came out, with John Stones and Omar Marmoush returning to the starting XI, but two minutes in, this confidence was quickly taken away.

We looked so disconnected in defence on the weekend, with countless misplaced passes and mistakes, we could’ve been three down after ten minutes. After the team settled, they looked so much more confident, with Haaland equalising in the second half.

It took the Gunners just 35 seconds to hit back though, and they went on to score three more from this, winning the game an eye-watering 5-1. In my opinion, the scoreline flattered Arsenal. Despite our poor defending, that was never a 5-1 game, but moments of slight luck with deflections and individual quality proved too much for City.

The lack of Rodri cannot be played down, and this is being shown game by game, especially against Arsenal. To combat this, City made one more signing on deadline day in an attempt to fill the void.

23-year-old, Nico Gonzalez has signed for the blues from Portuguese club, Porto. Another Spanish defensive midfielder, I think Pep has a type here! In all seriousness, Nico has played for Barcelona earlier in his career under Xavi, so I’m hoping this will give him credibility when fitting into the team.

Manchester City play Leyton Orient this weekend in the FA Cup before our tough fixtures for the month continue. In next weeks edition of City Watch, I’ll have the chance to review our first leg tie against Real Madrid, really looking forward to that!