Sunday, August 8, 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.







 



No comments:

Post a Comment

ON THE WINGS OF DESIRE

City's total domination of English football continues. Those that decried the self-styled one-sided end of football, this morning whoop...