Chelsea were brilliant last night and deserved to win by more. Playing Yaya with Demilchellis in CM was a big problem for City as their midfield wasn't mobile enough to cope with Chelseas movement. It's not often you will see City outplayed like that at home so fair play to Chelsea
What annoys me is when some of the smaller sides in the league come to Old Trafford and claim the ground to have no atmosphere, when in reality it's more that the crowd just aren't as up for the game as they would be if we were playing Liverpool, or City, or even a title rival. If anyone went to Old Trafford for one of those big games, they'd have a completely different opinion. My favourite away ground for atmosphere has always been Goodison Park, I've been to Stoke once aswell and the crowd were pretty noisy there too
On this evidence they may not even the best team in the premiership. Having said that they had Aguero and Nasri missing. Their consistency will win them the premiership. May be the CL might tell us how good they are..
I think that kind of thing always depends on where the away supporters are in the ground. OT must be pretty **** for the away fans, what with being sandwiched between the family enclosure and the prawn sandwich brigade in the south stand. Whereas at the Etihad the away fans are only a coin's throw (ba dum!) away from the hard core home fans so it must get pretty loud. Smaller and single tier stadia will probably have the edge there for the away fans as there's fewer places to tuck them away from the main stands.
Thf to city they can't play like they do every home game either, and in a tight game like that Aguero was a massive miss, especially when you see how Negredo played, and Silva missing from 5 yards in an area Aguero would certainly have been in rather than him. Chelsea could have given them a real beating last night if they had quality like hazard in other forward positions. Normally City can get by without Aguero but for this game they needed him badly. Jose is good at preventing teams playing. Jose did what he has done many times this season but against better defences and teams that didn't over commit ie Arsenal and United (good defence for that game), use 2 holding mids and use Oscar and hazard to cause the damage, and the pace of Ramirez and co, Hazard was brilliant last night at the Etihad. City over committed though with the way they've been scoring who can blame them. The 4 v 1 break by Chelsea that they failed to score from says it all about City's over committing, they needed to have a little more respect for the chavs. I am of the opinion that if Hazard was out of this game it would have been a 0 0. He opened up so much space last night, City's defence are probably still looking for him he's Chelsea's best player by about 40 miles.
Playing that immobile cart horse Demichelis in a 4 man midfield was suicidal by Pellegrini. He offered nothing. I couldn't believe he didn't hook him at HT, as he'd been booked & was having a mare. A half fit Negredo didn't help either like. However, that shouldn't take away from the fact that Chelsea were tactically & technically superb. Hazard had the best game I've seen him play & was obviously told to take on the City midfield & backline, as opposed to merely looking for a 1-2 or a short pass. It's a good result for the league, as a win for City last night & they'd have taken the impetus into their rather easy looking run of fixtures. Now there'll be some self doubt, a home defeat for the first time in donkeys years to boot.
Aye, it looked like Pellegrini was trying to out-Mourinho Mourinho with Demichelis in there, but all he ended up doing was shackling Yaya. Pretty sure that's what they fired Mancini for... Gotta a bit at Maureen tho' - if only he was as good at breaking down the bus as he was at parking it then they'd be well clear at the top by now.
I don't think anyone, including himself, was expecting him to come back out in the second half To everyone watching the game it was obvious it was hurting City having that sack of **** play in midfield.
