City’s higgledy-piggledy line-up for this match looked as though it had been selected by Manuel Petulengro rather than Pellegrini, but it looked well capable of being able to deal with Championship opponents Blackburn Rovers in the third round of the FA Cup at Ewood Park today.
Rovers fans may not have fancied it, hence the empty spaces adorning their sections, but the Darwen End was full to bursting point as City fans clearly expected a simple passage to the next round. At least until the whistle went to start the match.
With Pantilimon now restored to his more usual berth of stand-in goalkeeper in matches like these and Boyata given an outing at right back alongside Nastasic, Lescott and Clichy, it was probably never going to be easy at the back especially as the Lollipop Man himself, Garcia, was the defensive shield. Fernandinho was given Yaya’s role flanked by Silva and Milner. The mean machine of Negredo was paired with Dzeko up top.
Blackburn decided to rest their goal machine Rhodes and stiffen their midfield, playing three close together in front of the back four and two wide to take advantage in particular of the one-paced Boyata.
In the heart of their defence were Dann and Hanley, who has the appearance of a bad boxer, both of whom performed like lions for much of this match.
Honours were just about even from the start. Rovers showing no respect for their illustrious opponents with Silva hitting the ground under a provocative challenge and then Clichy hitting the advertising boards courtesy of another. For their part, Rovers had Gestede playing one-out up front, chasing down all he could and feeding off scraps that were slow to arrive, tugging a shirt here and there to try to make something happen.
Indeed if anything, Rovers were first to show with two corners finding their way to Dann forcing saves from Pantilimon. After the second of these an early ball to Milner opened the way for Fernandinho, but he couldn’t find the power to disturb Robinson from making his first save of the afternoon.
After 34 minutes Silva couldn’t emulate the Kolarov of the last match in scoring with his wrong foot, but this was a sitter and should have opened the scoring. Equally, Taylor ballooned a chance into the Darwen End when handily placed.
Blackburn had done well and were looking forward to the break when a Clichy corner found Dzeko on the edge of the box. His header brought in Negredo who slipped the ball home with his only meaningful contribution for two matches now. Rovers probably didn’t deserve to be a goal down at the break, and Negredo did look a fraction offside.
As the teams left the field there was an altercation between Rovers players, Taylor and Hanley which Dann had to cool down.
The second half got under way with both teams believing they could win this. Negredo had a half-hearted shout for a penalty, which replays had some sympathy with, but otherwise it really wasn’t going City’s way. Dzeko had contributed little up front and although he had scored Negredo wasn’t fairing much better. Much of Silva’s work came to nothing as the final pass was often too long and Milner was struggling to find a blue City shirt almost every time.
In the midfield Fernandinho was getting overrun as Garcia often took the easy option of sitting in front of the back four, leaving the brilliant Brazilian to take the game to Rovers, often alone. Up front absolutely nothing was happening in the most sterile of forward performances seen under Pellegrini’s tenure.
Ten minutes into the second half, affectionately known as “City time” by the Pedmachine and another corner swung in towards Gestede whose tame effort showed Pantilimon had caught “Juggling Joe Disease” as he let the simple effort wriggle out of his so-far safe-hands and Dann was on hand to equalise.
City tried to retaliate and some neat combination play between Silva and Negredo failed to find the unattended Dzeko and the danger went away.. A similar effort involving Silva, Negredo and Dzeko resulted in an easy save for Robinson from Negredo.
Then came another comic cuts moment. Yaya had already replaced Fernandinho in one of Pellegrini’s mystifying substitutions, but the second one saw Navas introduced for Negredo. We later discovered that it was intended that Dzeko should have been replaced but they wrote the wrong number on the documentation.
With ten minutes left, a swift City counter attack involving Dzeko and Milner saw Navas flash the ball wide from the inside left position and that was effectively the end of City’s contribution as an attacking force today.
Gary Bowyer had seen City wilting once again away from the comfort of the Etihad Stadium and introduced his own big guns. He had already brought on ex-Stretford, King no doubt hoping that the recent run of red rejects scoring against City could continue, but now he introduced Campbell and Rhodes in a bid to cause an upset. All of them made contributions, enough to draw Boyata into a stupid foul, kicking out at Lowe. No doubt if his name was Rooney it would have been seen as allowable, but Mr Oliver was quite rightly having none of it as he went to his top pocket to produce a second yellow and then a red card to probably bring the curtain down on Boyata’s City career. I defended him to every degree after his more famous sending off against Arsenal three years ago but with five gruelling and arduous minutes to go in a cup tie, this was simply unforgiveable.
Additionally, it meant that City had to sacrifice Silva for Zabaleta as they couldn’t really let King have the freedom of the right hand side of the pitch for the remaining ten minutes.
Rovers carved out two more chances for Cairney and Rhodes, but City remained resolute and held on for a draw.
Scott Dann was quite rightly voted man of the match on TV although the stadium call was for Cairney, who I thought played well, too.
City’s best player was harder to call because there were too many things going wrong. Maybe Fernandinho until he went off, maybe Silva, but much of Silva’s work was ruined by either a wayward final pass of too much beef on the ball or strikers who unlike the absent Aguero are not in tune with him.
The back line was not brilliant. Nastasic fed too many defensive headers straight back to the opposition, Clichy often ventured forward and it was as well that Rovers were concentrating on Boyata. Lescott was solid enough, but still gave cause for concern. Until his howler, Pantilimon looked safe but to drop the attempt by Gestede was sloppy goalkeeping and it will not put him in Pellegrini’s mind to replace Hart any time soon. If anything, despite his solid performances recently, it may push Pellegrini to consider one of the many goalkeeping transfer targets that City are supposed to have.
Negredo and Dzeko up front simply does not work. They too often run the same channels, and there is no front-post, far-post element to their play. If Dzeko is up there alone he is not often where the creative players expect to find him and all too often attacks break down for that reason.
With perhaps Navas and Nasri playing City could have got away with that comical back four, or five if you include Pantilimon today, but Silva was the only source of creativity and Fernandinho the only source of endurance against lively opponents who gave them a scare and who could have won it with a little more accuracy towards the end.
Pellegrini can take comfort from not having to take his team to the UAE now in the middle of the month as the teams will reconfigure at the Etihad in ten days time.
For the travelling fans today was probably the poorest showing of a City side this season and things need to improve if Pellegrini is to make good his intention to fire on all four fronts in 2014. By the time the replay comes around we will have a reasonable clue as to whether Wembley will be beckoning City again this season, especially if they can get a decent lead in the two-legged Capital One Cup Semi Final against West Ham on Wednesday. They didn’t really need to add to their competitive workload for January by coming up empty at Ewood Park.
UPCOMING DATES FOR YOUR FILOFAX:
all times East Manchester GMT
We 08Jan 19h45 West Ham United, The Etihad, LCSF1
Su 12Jan 14h05 Newcastle United, St James Park, PL
We 15Jan 19h45 Blackburn, The Etihad, FAC3R
Sa 18Jan 15h00 Cardiff City, The Etihad, PL
Tu 21Jan 19h45 West Ham United, Upton Park, LCSF2
We 29Jan 19h45, Tottenham Hotspur, White Hart Lane, PL
Mo 03Feb 2014 20h00 Chelsea, The Etihad, PL
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