City Watch: Spurs comeback stuns Blues

Following a poor result away against Bodo Glimt in the Champions League, and despite a bounce back against Wolves last weekend, City were in desperate need of a good result with a crucial game in mid week in Europe and against our old enemies, Tottenham Hotspur.

I’ll start by talking about our final Champions League group game against Galatasaray. 

Following the result in the Arctic Circle the week before, even a convincing win wouldn’t have confirmed a top eight and automatic finish for Manchester City, other results would have to go our way to ensure we didn’t end up in the play offs.

In terms of the City side of things, though, we ended up doing exactly what was required against the Turkish side. 

Although it wasn’t a convincing victory in terms of the scoreline, just 2-0 in the end, that was enough to provisionally put us in the top eight. 

Erling Haaland returned to goalscoring form after his mini drought, bagging his eighth goal of the Champions League campaign this season after just ten minutes. 

The Blues continued their dominance throughout the first half, with Rayan Cherki scoring and continuing his fine vein of form just before the half an hour mark.

After this, City went into complete game management mode, not taking many risks which we’ve seen plenty of times before. 

The game finished with Pep and his players in the top eight and just one game hinged on our success, Real Madrid v Benfica. 

The Spanish side were losing in the final moments, and an equaliser would have put us in the play offs.

If you didn’t see the result and final few minutes of that game, I implore you to watch the highlights, because it was prime Jose Mourinho. 

Benfica needed a goal despite the fact they were winning to ensure they stayed in the competition. 

They had a free kick in the last few seconds, so Jose sent his goalkeeper up who scored… who said football was boring!

Regardless, City secured their top eight finish and await to see who they play out of Real Madrid, Benfica, Inter Milan or Bodo Glimt. 

We then moved onto our game on the weekend in the Premier League against Spurs in London.

It still baffles me how, in my opinion, the greatest manager of all time’s kryptonite is quite literally Tottenham Hotspur. 

Pep hasn’t lost more times to any team other than Spurs, and it took us years to score at their new stadium.

A win was much needed, especially after Arsenal thumped Leeds 4-0 the day before. 

The first half looked incredibly promising for City, as we took a commanding two goal lead before the break with goals from Rayan Cherki, once again proving himself to be the player everything is centered around, and Antoine Semenyo, who extended his fantastic start to life under Pep.

All this then fell apart in the second half, with Cherki forced off, our creativity was gone and Spurs took advantage. 

They scored a very contentious goal to get them back in the game, with Solanke appearing to kick the back of Guehi’s leg who subsequently kicked it into his own net.

I honestly have no idea how VAR didn’t intervene and rule the goal out, once again we have an awful decision go against us. 

Rodri fumed about the goal in his interview, and it doesn’t surprise me, it was a shocking decision.

However, Solanke then scored one of the goals of the season, looping the ball over Donnarumma with an acrobatic scorpion kick to make it 2-2. 

It was end to end until the end, but no team could find a winner, putting us six points behind Arsenal in the League, with a trip to Anfield this week on the horizon.

Before a trip to Merseyside, though, the Blues will play Newcastle at the Etihad in the second leg of the Carabao Cup semi final, a tie we currently lead by two goals. It probably should be a three goal gap, but another bad VAR call prevented that in the first leg. 

I’m hoping for an uneventful game, which of course, by the time this column is released, will have already been played, but I just get the feeling it’ll be the exact opposite!