Former Arsenal and Celtic striker, and current Sky Sports Soccer Saturday football pundit, Charlie Nicholas was highly critical about Saturday afternoon’s Etihad performance against Brighton and Hove Albion.
Did he watch a different game?
I admit, due to reasons beyond my control I missed the first 30 minutes. Nevertheless, I saw both sides ‘going for it’. I loved the usually slick and integrated passing, and I LOVED Raheem Sterling’s performance. His attitude, passion, crisp and slick ball control was a memorising.
A solid team City performance.
On the other hand, Charlie Nicholas had a different point of view.
“Very routine. The first goal calmed City down. They were in control but took too many touches – it was too slow at times. The service was slow to Aguero, and Guardiola must be getting frustrated with why the team is taking too many touches when they could release it quicker.
“Boredom can creep in [for City fans], people can take so much talent for granted and get used to it. But also a lot of teams just come and defend too, this was predictable, and perhaps [City fans] don’t like the predictability of what happens here. When you’ve got players on song here, it’s worth paying to see them. Today it was just a little bit slow, but about getting the three points.”
I appreciate his slant was different to mine but do I wear rose tinted glasses?
What did you think of the overall team performance?
Rate the players
Etihad Stadium
Premier League
29/09/2018 3:00 pm
Attendance: 54152
Referee: Lee Mason
Manchester City | Brighton & Hove Albion | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Raheem Steling (29) Sergio Aguero (65) | |||||||
Ederson | Mathew Ryan | ||||||
Kyle Walker | Martín Montoya | ||||||
Nicolás Otamendi | Shane Duffy | ||||||
Aymeric Laporte | Lewis Dunk | ||||||
Oleksandr Zinchenko | Gaëtan Bong | ||||||
Bernardo Silva | Davy Propper | ||||||
Fernandinho | Anthony Knockaert | (78) | |||||
David Silva | (88) | Beram Kayal | |||||
Raheem Sterling | Yves Bissouma | ||||||
Sergio Agüero | (66) | Solly March | (83) | ||||
Leroy Sané | (71) | Jürgen Locadia | (73) | ||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
Arijanet Muric | Bruno | ||||||
Danilo | Leon Balogun | ||||||
Vincent Kompany | Alireza Jahanbakhsh | (78) | |||||
John Stones | Glenn Murray | (73) | |||||
Riyad Mahrez | (71) | José Izquierdo | (83) | ||||
Gabriel Jesus | (66) | David Button | |||||
Phil Foden | (88) | Bernardo Fernandes da Silva Junior |
Game Statistics |
||
28 | Goal attempts | 4 |
8 | On Target | 1 |
10 | Corners | 3 |
4 | Fouls | 10 |
0 | Yellow Cards | 3 |
0 | Red Cards | 0 |
80 | % | 20 |