Eventually, pressure will always pay. Manchester City test too many of your flaws too often for them not to take advantage. Sometimes it comes via communal magnificence, four or five players combining to create something ludicrously beautiful. Less often, one of their players gets frustrated that the machine isn’t quite clicking and does it all by himself. And when that happens, it’s usually Kevin De Bruyne.
A dribble that holds off one of the most complete central midfielders in the world. A latent threat that makes some of Europe’s most experienced centre-backs back off rather than trying to block the danger. A curling shot that was effectively De Bruyne calmly passing the ball to a specific point past Kepa’s goalline. A 1-0 lead that the Etihad had waited for with the expectation that comes when your team has won 11 on the spin in the league. Of course City deserved victory. Of course they will win the title.
One goal was enough because it usually is. It says plenty about Manchester City’s strength in depth that John Stones and Aymeric Laporte, second and third in the central defender queue after Ruben Dias, have such an outrageous record when in partnership. Before Saturday, the pair had started 13 games together in almost three years. City have won all 13 by an aggregate of 41-1. That only goal was scored by Stones himself for Club Brugge last November.
Rather than using all of its 20-plus cameras to film Manchester City vs Chelsea on Saturday, Sky Sports could have set up one tripod and wide lens and merely projected running footage of Thomas Tuchel on the Etihad touchline. It was as if Tuchel had spent the last three days lying dead still and was determined to make up for the shortfall in gestures and actions. Each one told the story of a match in which Chelsea were strangled by a team two positions and several class divisions away.
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This is what Manchester City can do to a manager, even one who has just become the first Chelsea coach to lead the club to the finals of both domestic cups and the Champions League before this tenure has even celebrated its first birthday. They pressed Tuchel’s team so high up the pitch and with such diligence that Chelsea were forced to make four higher-risk passes just to escape their own penalty area. Cue Tuchel’s first reason for frantic gestures.
At that point, the sensible thing might have been to bring Lukaku deeper and play through the lines with Mateo Kovacic and N’Golo Kante playing the ball into the feet of Christian Pulisic and Ziyech. Instead – and for no obvious good reason and with no obvious good result – they continually launched the ball long down the channels or over the top. Lukaku spent 95 per cent of the match lacking service and five per cent failing to do enough with the scraps he was fed. On the occasions when Chelsea did get in behind, wide of the penalty area, their crosses were woefully under or over-hit.
Lukaku is not blameless in this stagnating relationship, but it’s hard to work out why Tuchel thinks leaving his striker isolated and forcing him to both rely upon long balls and play with back to goal is a viable strategy to make it work. With 10 minutes to go, Tuchel switched up to a 4-2-3-1 and played with Mason Mount as a No 10 close to Lukaku. About 80 minutes too late, Chelsea supporters might say.
But then that is the advantage of playing for Manchester City rather than anyone else. Saturday’s fixture saw the two most expensive signings in Europe last summer in direct competition and both are struggling. Jack Grealish had another of those games: Lots of touches, plenty of bright ideas, occasional glimpses of magic that ultimately came to nought and a missed chance to claw some much-needed confidence. That has pretty much been his season on loop.
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But while Lukaku’s tribulations are painfully obvious watching Chelsea, Grealish is able to escape censure and heightened scrutiny because everything around him is working so well. He could (as plenty of Guardiola signings have) take 12 months to settle and everyone will remain broadly patient because City will have won at least one major trophy in the meantime.
That is the harmonic environment that Guardiola has created at this club. They can sign a £100m footballer who flatters to deceive during his first five months at the club and the only result is that everybody assumes that it will just take a little more time. They can welcome the European champions for a crucial league game and nobody considers for a second that they might not win it. Maybe next season; quite possibly not.
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