MIRROR IMAGE: CITY 5-0 ARSENAL

MANCHESTER CITY 5-0 ARSENAL |  MANCHESTER CITY 1-5 ARSENAL

Saturday 28th August 2021 | Saturday 22nd February 2003

✅🗽 STATUES | On the day that the club unveiled brand new statues in memory of two players who were amongst those most responsible for dragging Manchester City kicking and screaming into the bright light of success, Arsenal's rearguard decided to mimmick the metalic leviathons standing motionless on the club's forecourt. 

In 2003 it was also a day for statues, featuring Steve Howey, David Sommeil and the irrepressible Jihai Sun, all of whom did their best impressions of pillars of cement as the light-footed Dennis Bergkamp and Robert Pires waltzed through time and again.

✅👱 DUMBSTRUCK BLONDES | Arsenal keeper Bernd Leno could not really be faulted for any of the goals but instead stood slack-jawed as his defenders defied the laws of gravity by falling over things that didn't exist, running into each other when there seemed space not to and using their muscly limbs to no effect whatsoever. Carlo Nash had watched with similar distaste in 2003 as his colleagues had melted into the weak February sunshine at the prospect of trying to defend against Thierry Henry.

✅💥 SHREDS/TATTERS | Whichever happens to be your go to phrase for ripping stuff up, there were mirror images here too, with the Manchester Evening News' Simon Stones going for "shreds" to describe the 2003 imbalance, while the Observer's Richard Jolly opted for "tatters" to describe yesterday's mismatch.

Clearly in both cases, the defences were not only in need of counselling afterwards, but also a visit from someone with a needle and thread.

✅ ALGERIAN INFLUENCE | In 2003, City's midfield was composed of the not inconsiderable bulk of the late Marc Vivien Foe, the not inconsiderable skills of Eyal Berkovic plus Djamel Belmadi. Although the latter has resurfaced to great effect in recent times as his country's national coach, in 2003 his influence on this game was something just short of minimal. Even the introduction of another Algerian as subtitute in the form of crowd favourite Ali Benarbia made only a slight difference to the flow of play. Fast forward 18 years and City also brought on an Algerian subtitute yesterday in Riyad Mahrez. 

✅👏 STANDING OVATION | Arsenal's first half efforts in 2003 had brought them a four-goal lead after 19 minutes and, by half time, the home fans were beginning to indulge themselves in a large slice of Schadenfreude. A standing ovation awaited the Arsenal team as it left the Maine Road pitch at half time. Although the Arsenal fans could not quite manage a similarly selfless effort this time around, they could be seen celebrating City's third goal. The standing ovation on this occasion was reserved for the slight figure of Bernardo Silva, leaving the pitch whilst wiping a tear from his eye, a sure sign that his time at the club is running into its finals minutes.

The more things change, the more they stay the same....

   

MIRROR IMAGE: CITY 5-0 NORWICH

MANCHESTER CITY 5-0 NORWICH CITY

(Saturday 26th July 2020 - Saturday 21st August 2021)

✅⚽ 5-0 - Two consecutive home games in the Premier League versus Daniel Farke's open and pliable Norwich City have returned identical results. Add to this the fact that City have hit a seven, a six, another five and a four in the last 11 Premier League fixtures between the two sides and you can easily see why Norwich are, both in Premier League terms and historically speaking, one of City's most welcome guests.

✅ 👀 Same scorers - Riyad Mahrez and Raheem Sterling scored in both games, while Gabriel Jesus, scoring one two seasons ago, assisted two this time around.

✅ 2-0: In both games City went in at the break two goals up.

✅🎤: "I am a bit disapppointed with the scoreline." - Daniel Farke, Norwich manager, 26/7/20

             "I am a bit disappointed with the way we conceded our goals" - Daniel Farke, Norwich                             manager, 21/8/21

✅✈ - On both occasions the match, despite being the scene of an avalanche of goals, was dominated by thoughts of departures and arrivals. In the 2020 match v Norwich David Silva played his last-ever game at the Etihad and would become a Real Sociedad player later in the summer. Fast forward 14 months and the talk was of new signing Jack Grealish, making his first-ever Etihad appearance and scoring the second goal, to become the first City home debut scorer since Frank Lampard in 2014. 

The departure of perhaps City's greatest play-maker ever and the arrival of one who could eventually match his output.

✅🔑 - "Once Norwich go a goal down, they seem unable to respond - in the 27 games where they have fallen behind in the league this season, they have ended up losing all of them, and are the only team in Premier League history to fail to recover a single point from a losing position in an entire campaign...." stated the BBC website in 2020. Farke's men will do well to put an end to this tradition, if they want to avoid a similar fate (relegation) to that which met them after this ffixture in 2020.

✅👏 - On both occasions, spectators were in the news. With the Covid pandemic taking a hold, City's game in July 2020 had to be played behind closed doors. This time, a home crowd reappeared into the (half-) light to clap their heroes back onto the turf for the first time since March 2020. The emotions of playing in front of a crowd once again representing a welcome return to normal for players and fans alike.

Great to be back! pic.twitter.com/aij42fPdmg

— Adam (@AdamSavageeeeee) August 21, 2021

 

✅5-PLUS - Since Pep Guardiola's arrival in the Premier League there have been 49 games won by 5-0 or above, 23 of these by City themselves (47%), including the last two against Norwich City via OptaJoe

23 - Since Pep Guardiola joined Manchester City ahead of the 2016-17 season, there have been 49 Premier League games won by a margin of 5+ goals; the Spaniard’s side are responsible for 23 of these (47%). Demolition. pic.twitter.com/TieeGYAr1y

— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) August 21, 2021

✅⚽ - Raheem Sterling's goal in July 2020 meant that he was the first English player to net 20 goals for City in a season since Brian Kidd in 1976-77.

            - Raheem Sterling's goal in August 2021 meant that he became the 41st player to score for City in 7 different seasons.  

The more things change, the more they stay the same.... 

LAUGHING AT ONESELF

In 1970 when decimilisation and Berni Inns were invented, for the good people of Britain, used as they were to dragging their tired bodies down to sooty pubs lying under dense banks of cigarette fog and paying for pints of mild with bits floating in them in shillings, the world probably seemed to be turning a little faster than they thought they could cope with. 

Things have changed a little since then, of course, and sports clothing firm Puma seem this week to be pedalling just that little bit harder than everyone else to recreate the feeling of dizzying speed our forbears must have been dazzled by in 1970.  

In time to come, historians will note that "City's astonishing 2021 third kit unveiling felt like one of those moments when society moved on and many people shouted hey, wait a sec, you're going too fast".

Puma are not going too fast. Their smartly trousered marketing executives will tell you they are going just fast enough to stay ahead of Bruder Adidas and the huge bad smell that is Nike. The immutable truth is that this is the next page of the adventure, whether old stick-in-the-muds like it or not. It was the same for everyone in 1970 when well-educated Mike Jagger (soon to rename himself Mick) started talking to tv hosts in a cockney accent that moved him quickly down the all-important social ladder. The world was moving fast, a little too fast and the rest of us were playing catch-up.

It has been quite a week at Manchester City, what with the announcement we will have edible coffee cups at the Etihad too, as well as transfer bids the size of banker's salaries being put in for any number of international-grade strikers, some of whom we have never heard of before and others who we wish we hadn't. It has been quite a wait for Harry Kane, but an even longer one for drinks recepticles that we can eat. Finally something is set to budge. 

In the 1985 close season, with City fans chomping at the tops of their Fanta tins after promotion the previous May in a match against Charlton Athletic that left many separated from friends and items of clothing by the end, the club's startling array of new recruits - including let it be said, nay shouted, Sammy McIlroy - appeared in frisky pre-season training mode wearing the previous season's away kit, plastered with a sticker announcing "Umbro Training". 

McIlroy's facial expression said it all. 

Sartorially inept in 1985 as well. 

This was how the late, great Peter Swales managed the budget. Fast forward four decades and still we are wearing strange clothes that others will see fit to laugh at. Feel free at this juncture to spare a kind thought too for our brothers and sisters at Fenerbahce, Valencia, Marseille, AC Milan and Monchengladbach, all of whom have also been left with their sartorial trousers around their ankles by the teenage design hotshots at PumaHouse.

Perhaps even more heart-warming than the club's evident willingness to hold on to their hard-won reputation for quirkiness is that, despite all the gales of propaganda about world class strikers, the opening day belly flop at Tottenham revealed the three-year wait for a proper left back to be an even more glaring hole in our pyjamas. With no striker to talk of and some other areas of the formation that hardly bore thinking about, it was a tear-inducing scene. The left side of defence in particular appeared to be laughing at us, rather than the more traditional other way around. There stood the by now indescribable Benjamin Mendy. To say the lad's display was erratic would have suggested there were also good things going on out there on his patch, but still, at least he was wearing a reasonably alright kit.

This led to some making an obvious link between the week's most eye-catching developments...

    

A bold move by Puma. Fair play. pic.twitter.com/IB02SnhRVI

— Murd (@Murd73) August 18, 2021

With no space for, of all things, the club crest, it remains something of a masterstroke that Puma have managed to edge in their own logo top and centre, above everything else, a welcome reminder of what is important in these modern footballing times. Perhaps in times that come, we might mix the current thinking with some of City's previous Champions League change strips and create a kit that subscribes to none of the old rules at all and can be, at turns, a pyjama, an outfit for a night out in Morecambe or something to muck out the chickens in, if you are lucky enough to have any in these times of disease and instability. 

For a while, we were all beginning to take it, and by association, ourselves, a bit too seriously. So, thank you, City, and thank you, Puma, for reminding us what we are all really here for.  

Look what you’ve done Puma pic.twitter.com/3DSuxGlg4N

— ⚡️🇧🇼 (@Priceless_Silva) August 19, 2021

 

MIRROR IMAGE: CITY 0-1 LEICESTER -

MANCHESTER CITY 0-1 LEICESTER CITY

(Saturday 4th November 2000 - Saturday 7th August 2021)

 

✅⚽ 0-1 - Despite more possession and more chances, City were beaten by the only goal of the game, scored by a player who had previously been based in Manchester for his football upbringing. 

✅👱 - Matchwinner Robbie Savage scored Leicester's goal after 54 minutes of an attritional match at Maine Road. The flaxen-haired former Manchester United trainee would later feature widely as a pundit with "larger-than-life" as his badge of honour. 21 years later the curtain-raiser to the new season would feature a major kerfuffle around City's new £100m recruit from Aston Villa Jack Grealish, Both men wearing hair that could have been slightly better thought out.

✅$$$ - "Blues Vow To Spend" was a headline that brought sentiments of relief to City fans in 2000, watching a side containing Laurent Charvet and Danny Tiatto try to make its way in the top flight after promotion under Joe Royle. Vowing to spend in 2021 is still a very viable headline for City, although the news carries different emotions: the bursts of interest are now interspersed with anxiety that Nick and Tariq "might" take it badly. In 2000, the answer to City's problems was to sniff around at Ewood Park and entice unloved Egil Ostenstad south on a promise. "He's coming (on loan) with a view to signing permanently," the manager enthused, "but we haven't even discussed a fee yet."

  

✅💥 - "Don't Panic" screamed the headline from the Evening News in 2000, an emotion much more quickly attained in 2021, where the slightest flicker of weakness from any of the anointed Big Six brings shivers of excitement to headline writers everywhere.  

✅🎯 - "Flimsy finishing" was cited by The Observer as the major obstacle to City overcoming Leicester in 2000. A certain delicacy of finish also overtook the likes of Riyad Mahrez and the almost completely anonymous Ferran Torres in the 2021 Community Shield. Only 3 of 14 shots were on target. (This from 21 years ago, but could just as easily be about the latest encounter between the two sides)

✅% - For a Pep Guardiola side, finishing with 57% possession stats is the least the manager expects. Domination of the ball means you increase your chances of dominating the scoreline. It doesn't always work, however, witness the Community Shield. City went down to Leicester in 2000 with 53% ball possession, a figure in those days, under a manager like Joe Royle, committed as he was to rattling cages and keeping the ball airborne, that rang different kinds of bells. 

✅ 5/10 - With Leicester's stout defending being marshalled by ex-City youth product Ged Taggart, the game seemed to hinge greatly on the efforts of a player, who had started his career in the sky blue youth ranks. Sound familiar? 

With Taggart holding the home strikeforce easily at bay, the Manchester Evening News was forced to give the stumbling figure of Paulo Wanchope a measley 5/10. Fast forward 21 years and a fellow Spanish-speaker heading City's attack in vain easily qualified for a similarly low mark.  

...The more things change, the more they stay the same.