Man City 4-2 Spurs (Kulusevski 44’, Royal 45+2’ | Alvarez 51’, Haaland 53’, Mahrez 63’ 90′)
An hour after abject misery, during which Pep Guardiola looked towards his bench as if to search for answers that didn’t exist, Manchester City’s manager hugged Ruben Dias on the touchline. Dias was waiting to come on and run down the clock when Riyad Mahrez dinked the ball over Hugo Lloris to seal City’s best 45 minutes of this season. That hug, and the smile that followed it, conveyed it all: relief, vindication, redemption.
Gone in 60 seconds; back in 90. Thursday afternoon brought dark humour from Spurs supporters who reasoned that heavy defeat might at least stop Arsenal from marching to the title. Surely this was the perfect ending then – Arsenal saw flickers of an 11-point lead and then had it reinforced just how hard these next four months will be.
The Premier League is a rampant PR machine, and watching brilliant footballers never gets tiring, but there was something of the family roast dinner organised for 27 December about this fixture. Thursday marked the end of a relentless run of televised fixtures, the 20th of the last 21 days on which a Premier League, FA Cup or EFL Cup game has been shown live. The rotation of “Big Six” fixtures over the last three weeks has left your head spinning.
What we needed was some glorious chaos, two teams who were stinging after taking local derby slaps but who both possessed the perfect weapons to hurt the other and the fragile confidence to make robust self-protection unlikely. With those ingredients, madness and magic are made.
There was a period of three or four minutes, immediately after Manchester City’s equaliser, where both sides appeared to have shaken hands on an agreement to play without a midfield and see what happens. Three times Tottenham countered and had at least a one-man advantage on the overlap. Three times a City player stopped the ball as if to ask for calm, only for the mania to begin as soon as they passed that ball on.
We are used to watching a team get booed off when Tottenham are playing; we’re just not used to the moans and groans being directed at someone else. Those boos, aimed at the players and Guardiola too as the half-time whistle sounded, are proof that entitlement is real, but they also reflect what was becoming a sticky situation.
Those problems have not been eliminated. The slow passing, the in-to-out and then out-to-in runs of Erling Haaland without getting the ball, the missed half chances but nothing to fully hang your hat on, given all the possession – all were there in the first half. The sucker punch(es), too. There is a weird Bermuda Triangle into which Manchester City players must sink, because for a team that has so much safe possession they are unforgivably exposed to the counter attack. And if the spaces don’t kill them, foolish mistakes will.
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What time to watch PSG vs Saudi All-Star XI today as Ronaldo makes debut after Al Nassr move19 January, 2023Who knows what changed at half-time. Guardiola did not make personnel or systemic changes, as he had against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge when the substitutes changed the course of the match. Perhaps it was simply a question of mindset. In April 2021, when City fought back against Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final, Guardiola was philosophical: “Sometimes you need to relax, to be ourselves.”
City found themselves and more. The great nonsense of their slow passing is that Guardiola’s players are proficient and well-drilled enough to pass the ball at a fizzing speed without ceding possession. It is a myth that slower is safer, because that speed brings with it time and space and Manchester City can break your spirit with space before you’ve worked out how they created it out of thin air. This has to be the blueprint.
Signs of something blue and something new. Haaland and Julian Alvarez have now started two Premier League matches together and have now scored seven goals between them. Nottingham Forest were meagre opposition, but this could work as a combination. It’s not that Alvarez and Haaland work as a partnership – quite the opposite. But when two strikers both make intelligent runs, it does offer more than just another controlling passing midfielder might.
And so unthinkably, City end up in a net positive position despite showing another opponent their evident vulnerabilities. If a team that has been relentlessly successful needs to see its downfall in high definition to relearn why this all matters so much, City are back. They’re coming for you. And you. And you.
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