They Bore you to Defeat

Manchester City are a team known for 2 things.
1. Winning every domestic title going
2. Playing in front of half empty for huge European games

The reasons they are known for these things were both on full display in my last match of 2021.

The match in question was their visit to Brentford and as a home fan I went into this match with extremely no expectations of seeing my team win. City have a team stocked full of expensively bought world class stars who came into the game top of the table by 6 points and in brilliant form. They had scored seven, four and six goals in their last 3 matches coming into this one and given that this one was against a newly promoted team I expected them to score at least five in this one. Brentford are also not in good form going into this one, with 1 win and 4 losses in their last 5. That one win being against newly promoted Watford who are hovering above the relegation zone.

I attempted to arrive at the ground in time for the arrival of the away team coach because the hype around City is so high that even I wanted to see some of their players emerge, but due to delays on the tube I arrived about 15minutes too late for the coach. This was a good sign of how disappointing my whole evening would be.

The second sign was the clear lack of defence and the weakened bench that City had bothered to show up with. They had no Walker or Stones in their squad and both Steffen and Carson, of Euro 2008 qualifying fame, as their goalkeeper on the bench. They even followed Chelsea’s lead from last week by naming a debutant on the bench and not include him on the programme. Just the one this time though and this time he didn’t even play.

On the subject of those who didn’t play, Rico Henry was out of the Bees squad for reasons I’m not aware of, Bryan Mbuemo missed out with injury and Canos was only named on the bench. So both teams were missing some of their main players and this had a clear negative effect on the game.

From kick-off Man City played keep ball camped in the Bees half and did all they could not to do anything with it but pass it to someone else in blue. It was a dreadful game to watch and were it not for the hype surrounding city leading me to hope that the game might spark alive at some point I would’ve walked out at half-time. Once City took the lead with their only piece of skill in the 17th minute they were content to simply hog the ball in their attacking half and pass it between each other for the rest of the match. Brentford rarely threatened to get the ball either and on those rare occasions they did get the ball they did not look like scoring.

City’s goal was the only move of any quality all match and came from a 40 yard pass that picked out De Bruyne on the right side of the penalty box and he dropped a gorgeous ball onto the feet of Phil Foden on the other side of the box to stroke it home. It was an incredible move by the visitors and far more like what I expected to see from Man City all match. It’s a crying shame that this was the only time they showed the class that they undoubtedly have in their team. It was also almost taken away by a VAR check for offside, but this was dismissed by the VAR official relatively quickly.

It also came during the only time in the match when the hosts had actually got hold of the ball and unlike the visitors they had threatened to do things with it, namely to score. They pounced on a defensive mix-up by City to get in behind. A quick 1-2 between Wissa and Onyeka and the former attempted to cross the ball to Ivan Toney waiting on the penalty spot. The cross never made it to Toney though as it was cut out and turned towards his own net by Ruben Dias, luckily for the visitors Ederson was switched on and dived low to his right to keep the scores at 0-0 and within 2 minutes City had taken the lead.

These two breakouts of a football match aside the first half was boring to the point of being a cure for insomnia. I even found myself drifting off at points during the match due to the dross on the pitch. I have never come close to this level of boredom at a football match before.

At half time though it seemed that both managers were satisfied with what they had seen as neither of them made any substitutions and the game got back underway. The lack of changes on either side meant a return to the dross ball that had been seen in the first half after the first 5 minutes that is.

City even had the ball in the net a second time in the 50th minute when a cross from the left found Foden in space in the box and he finished it across goal, only for the assistant on the far side to raise his flag and correctly rule the goal out for offside.

That was the last bit of interesting play for 16 minutes though till De Bruyne tried to bring some enjoyment back into the match with a great effort from distance that Fernandez had to get down to his left to palm away. The ball then bounced up and De Bruyne went for the spectacular, which would have really livened up the match, but his bicycle kick could only find the side netting.

This was the final enjoyable part of the match though as City settled into their keep ball and it got to the point where even their own fans started drifting off a bit. I looked towards the City fans and saw a few of them yawning and a couple more with their heads resting on the shoulder of the fan next to them, who I assume they knew. When your ‘football’ has this effect on your own fans you have to know that something has gone wrong.

There were chants of ‘Boring, boring City’ from the home fans and Mexican Waves in the stands throughout the second half and I’m surprised it took that long for them to begin.
The main thing that stands out in my mind from the second half, apart from the lack of skill or effort on display, was the amount of diving from the visitors.

The player in City’s ranks with a reputation for diving is Raheem Sterling, but with him on the bench for this one his teammates took over. First through the number 10 they bought from Villa in the summer of 2021 for a reported £100million. In the second half he took to falling over with no-one near him and the ref kept giving him free-kicks for it so he kept doing it and then having seen how well it worked for his teammate City’s goalscorer decided to get in on the act too. For the last 20minutes the ref was taken in by so many questionable City moves that it became embarrassing.

Those were the most interesting parts of the most boring match it has ever been my misfortune to bear witness too. The fact that there were so few of them made this a real drudge of a blog to write as I had to re-live the horror of the match.

City win domestic matches by doing everything they can to stop their opposition getting the ball and they play in front of empty stadiums in Europe because their fans are only willing to sit through their brand of football if they know they will get the glory of a win. United used to be the team that glory hunting fans would have followed in the past, but they have now crossed the city of Manchester to support the noisy neighbours (from their homes in the south of course).

This match was at least a fitting end to the year though, an awful match to end an awful year both for me personally and for the world. Hopefully 2022 will be better for all of us and the world situation will improve soon too.

I will be back with my first blog of the new and improved year next week, when I’m back up north again and blogging about the last game of my holiday get away in London as Brentford start the new year hosting Steven Gerrard’s Aston Villa. No matter what happens in that match one things for sure, it can’t help but be more exciting than this one was.