The stats say it all really…
· 72% possession
· 19 shots to their 3
· 8 shots ‘on target’ to their 2 and…
…13 corners to their 1
Unfortunately for all that effort, dominance and pressure the final stat was Manchester City 1 – 1 Everton.
Nothing to get into a twist over…
…but that’s no wins in 3 now and 7 goals
conceded during that trio of fixtures. What an amazing contrast to
the previous form of played 10, won 10, scored 30, conceded 6! That series of
events had me almost using the phrases “typical City” and the “great unpredictables”
as I left the Etihad yesterday. Almost…
Those last 3 games might suggest to some
that we’ve been “found out” but I’m not going for that just yet.
-
At Celtic
it was always going to be one of those where the home side – and fans – would be right up for a loud,
Champions League party-atmos night…and we
held our own despite a poor defensive display.
-
At Spurs,
then, yes; they ‘did their homework’,
‘did a number on us’ and fully deserved their victory on their home patch.
-
Against Ronald Koeman’s men, yesterday, it was simply an excellent
defensive display by ‘the oppo’ – numbers
behind the ball too – and a SUPERB day at the office for their keeper! Iheanacho
will have better days (a missed opportunity in many ways for the young striker
who appeared to struggle to control the ball at times) and Aguero too appears to be hitting a little ‘crisis
of confidence’ spell.
But I was heartened by other displays.
Despite a shape that took me some time to
work out; I thought we looked more assured at the back and further up the field,
David Silva was amazing as is often the case
of course. Kevin De Bruyne looked sharp for
a player who has just returned from a fairly serious-looking injury [at the
time] and Nolito continues his [good] habit
of getting in places where it hurts. Happy birthday fella!
In summary…
…not too much damage done – Arsenal moved closer but definitely wobbled a
little by scraping a 3-2 home win and impressive [against us] Spurs just about managed to salvage a point
away from home.
Leicester don’t look like they’re going to be a threat this season - not for the moment at least – and Liverpool & Manyoo
are about to ‘scrap it out’ tomorrow…hopefully for a ‘points shared’ in my book anyway.
It never feels good to drop home points but
with…
Southampton (H)
WBA (A)
Middlesbrough (H)
Crystal Palace (A)
and…
Burnley (A)
…all up next in the league before December;
as long as we continue to press teams as we did yesterday then our quality should bring us out of those 5 fixtures with a decent amount of points
before a tough December & January.
At least it makes it interesting!
Note following-on from yesterday’s blog posting (side note at the end):
Unless there was an incident I’m unaware of, it was
really good to see the Everton fans behaving well yesterday. In fact, before
they scored yesterday they were really very quiet indeed!
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