Time and again as manager of Wigan Athletic, Steve Bruce had the Indian sign over City. All too often he created a 1-0 defeat for City out of nothing before loading his midfield and back line to deter an equaliser. And today against the Blues he must have though his chickens had come home to roost as early as ten minutes into the match when Jelavic tried to out-muscle Kompany, was hauled to the ground and City`s captain excluded, forcing Pellegrini`s boys to fight for 80 minutes short-handed.
With Aguero once again in sick bay and the team having exerted themselves to the limit in the Camp Nou on Wednesday, Pellegrini sent out a bit of a mix and match eleven designed to match any 4-5-1 threat to the midfield, but to also create a springboard for launching attacks in support of the lone striker, Edin Dzeko, hopefully refreshed from a good second half performance against Barcelona.
Demichelis was restored to centre back, perhaps predictably, and Clichy at left back. Fernadinho and Yaya were assisted in midfield by Garcia with Nasri and Silva providing the links to Dzeko.
In the early stages City were looking like a side that had found themselves eliminated from two cup competitions in a week having really pushed themselves in midweek in a bid to reverse a two-goal deficit against one of the world`s best club teams. And their struggle suddenly became even more difficult after only nine minutes when Jelavic clearly grabbed hold of Kompany, got away with it, but was pretty prompt in hitting the deck when Kompany did likewise to him. I don`t think we can have any real sense of injustice that in isolation Kompany`s retaliation warranted a red card but if referee Mason had given the first foul then there would have been no need for VK to take the law into his own hands.
His frustration boiled over and it is understood that he tried to rearrange a brick wall as he headed down the tunnel for a pronto shower.
Two defeats on the trot and now down to ten men against a club that they had not beaten away in the post first world war period and City`s season was hanging by a thread. Only the Capital One Cup on the sideboard and nine points behind Chelsea albeit with sufficient games in hand to make up that deficit and staring down the barrel of potential defeat, once again at the hands of a lowly-placed team.
But the reality of what came next was almost unbelievable. Instead of going into their away-day shells, City came out all guns blazing. The rearrangement saw Garcia step back alongside Demichelis into a centre-back partnership that had Keystone Cops written all over it, but Demichelis remorselessly maligned in Ped Reports amongst others stepped up to the plate to marshal the troops in a fashion we have not seen from him this season.
Yaya pressed on upfield and it was time for David Silva to take centre stage. Silva has been stifled out of matches recently, shackled often by two or three players reeling him in like sheepdogs at a trial and blocking off his passing routes. But in all the adversity facing City today he was simply magical. His wand had been clearly full re-charged. In almost the next move of the match he received a ball from Dzeko, played in Zabaleta who returned the compliment, so he switched play to Yaya, who also returned the compliment with a neat curving inside-of-the-foot pass. For once neither Huddlestone nor Figueroa had closed his space so he unleashed a superb curling shot which began life going wide of the post and then curled back just inside it giving McGregor the proverbial two hopes – Bob Hope and no hope.
This magnificent goal changed the total perspective of the match as it breathed new life into City who now got themselves into their masterly stride with their passing and movement, rolling their sleeves up and refusing to be bullied as teams managed by Steve Bruce like to do.
Huddlestone, Livermore and Meyler tried hard to get their team moving but Yaya was on his mettle, Ferndinho dug in and behind them the double calamity- in waiting of Demichelis and Garcia actually looked solid as neither Jelavic nor Long could get themselves in amongst it.
Indeed rather than Hull making the extra man count City were next up on the half hour with Zabaleta making one of his trade mark forays into the box and his howitzer shook the crossbar and bounced down on to the line. We waited for the ref`s watch to light up, but not today as the score remained at 1-0.
City seemed comfortable getting themselves to the break in front without any real pressure on another makeshift central defensive partnership, but it was to be another story in the second half as Bruce deployed the Cardiff tactics of bombarding the City penalty area with an array of aerial artillery designed to get Long, Jelavic and the supporting Huddlestone on the end. But Joe Hart stood irrepressibly firm .
The Tigers did have the ball in the net which was correctly flagged offside and then after 68 minutes Boyd dropped himself to the grass as Hart rushed out of his goal, clearly looking for a penalty[. His dying swan went unpunished as did a dreadful assault by Elmohamady who having decided that in this form couldn`t be stopped within the laws of the game, went over the top studs-up in the kind of effort that simply cannot be mistaken for anything else, unless of course you are Lee Mason.
In the incident that saw Boyd denied a penalty Hart squared up to him amidst rumours that he spat at Joe. If he did then it is one of football`s most despicable acts related to South American sides in the sixties and the like of Juventus later on. Needless to say Mason booked Hart and Boyd got away with it, the story of City in recent matches.
Hull still gamely went in search of an equaliser but found all the doors shut. This encouraged City to set about securing the points with a second goal. Fernadinho should have made it 2-0 after 72 minutes and net-minder McGregor made an excellent block when Dzeko looked well placed to score after 85 minutes.
This left the City faithful wondering if Dzeko was ever going to score again in a City shirt as all of his work recently has lacked accuracy and determination. But their answer came as the game was about to enter stoppage time as Silva once more commanded centre stage, playing the ball back to Clichy and then running long for the return. Clichy`s pass was untidily intercepted by Rosenior who lost control under threat from El Magico. Silva looked up once, spotted Dzeko`s run, slid the ball to him with slide-rule precision and the big Bosnian drove home into the bottom corner in what used to be typical Dzeko style.
We should make no mistake as to how important the outcome of this match was to prove for City. It was an accomplished performance with, initially, a below-par side struggling to overcome the demons of the last seven days. Reduced to ten men so early in the game should really have seen them collapse under the strain leaving their title hopes in tatters. But we should recall that the month of February was also unkind to City in 2012, when their title hopes looked to have been usurped by Stretford, only for them to bounce back a manner never to be seen again.
The late match saw Chelsea beaten by a late Aston Villa goal, have two players sent off and Mr Big Mouth Mourinho also sent upstairs.
Against the odds a team needs its senior footballers to lead by example and I doubt we would have expected this to be Demichelis as he seems to have assisted City`s elimination from two competitions almost single-handedly and also made life difficult for them in the Capital One Cup Final. We almost certainly didn`t expect it to be Dzeko, whose shooting radar over the last few weeks has resembled that of the missing flight MH370, but today he eclipsed the midfielders in terms of the ground covered as he put in one of unheralded, no-frills shifts and got himself a deserved goal in the act.
Joe Hart too has been under threat this season, but he stood firm in difficult circumstances as the aerial bombardment took hold.
And then there was Silva. Don`t we simply adore this footballing genius, wizard, the superlatives can never be enough for the man we probably most pay our money to see as we travel the continent and our home country in support of City. The Tigers have some bruisers in their midfield and some big lads to boot, but the Canario simply skipped around them keeping the ball moving and forcing them to make decisions of the kind that should have seen parity restored with a sending-off for Elmohamady. That he wasn`t and that City had to continue to persevere against a full complement of opposition players bears further testimony to the important outcome of this football match.
On the plus side Kompany will only miss the match at home to Fulham and will be ready for the visits to Stretford and Ashburton Grove as the backlog of Barclays Premier League fixtures starts to bite. If City can remain unbeaten throughout those fixtures then we may start to dream once more. But as the old saying goes?”We take each match as it comes” and it is the Pedmachine`s belief that we should look no further than next week. Fulham should be acceptable at home and should be the ideal launching pad into a difficult seven days thereafter which will definitely shape the end of the season events.
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