Pep Guardiola is a hard man to please. Manchester City went away for the first leg of a Champions League knockout game, scored twice, kept a clean sheet, had 61% of the ball, limited their opponents to just one shot on target, and extended their winning streak to 19 games. And what does he say afterwards? “We have to be more clinical.“
Presumably Sergio Agüero’s return from injury will go some way to reassuring Guardiola that greater clinicality (clinicalism? clinicity? pick your favourite) is on the way. But meanwhile, Plan B – have the short lads score headers – seems to be working just fine. 5’7″ Raheem Sterling at the weekend, 5’8″ Bernardo Silva here. Nobody thinks to mark the short lads.
And City, even if they weren’t perfect in front of goal, were close to perfection everywhere else, as João Cancelo continued to establish himself as the world’s finest and perhaps only playmaking full-back. This wasn’t a hammering but it was confident and controlled, and Gladbach, who scored 16 goals in the group stage, never looked like scoring here. Except right at the end, when Rodri played a silly no-look pass across his own midfield. That wasn’t great.
City are, of course, prone to extreme weirdness in this competition, so we must be careful. But looking at the field after the first round of games, it seems clear that of all the superpowers, they’re the strongest at this stage. Juventus lost to Porto, Real Madrid barely scraped past ten-man Atalanta, and while Bayern and PSG are sitting on convincing leads, they are rather inconveniently trapped in actual title races back home.
(Also we have a sneaking suspicion that Bayern can’t defend. if you want to bookmark this and come back with insults at the end of the season when they win absolutely everything again, you are more than welcome.)
This all adds up to one thing: it’s time to start saying Quadruple again. “Quadruple!” It’s a fun word. Obviously you won’t get Guardiola to tempt fate like that, not when he’s only halfway through drafting his special 3-1-1-5 formation for the semi-finals. But he did find the time to explain just why City have been able to put together this extraordinary run of 19 straight wins and counting.
WE HAVE A LOT OF MONEY TO BUY A LOT OF INCREDIBLE PLAYERS.”
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