Back In The FA Cup 3rd Round

Sunday 8th January 2023: FA Cup 3rd Round: Etihad Stadium: Manchester City vs Chelsea

The FA Cup 3rd round is always a historic weekend of football and this season is just so happened to coincide with my first weekend in my new city of Manchester. The Etihad Stadium is just a short jaunt down the road from my new abode. Thus as the draw was made I was keeping an eye on just what potential banana skin would be thrown City’s way and what lower league team did they get drawn against… Oh, just Graham Potter’s Chelsea.

So on my first weekend in Manchester I had lucked out with a toe-to-toe tussle between two Premier League heavyweights right on my doorstep. I thought I was in for the highest quality, end-to-end confrontations for the purist that I could ever hope to witness. I couldn’t have been any more hopelessly naïve.

Sure Chelsea were fielding a rotated team; with N’golo Kante, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Christian Pulisic, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Edouard Mendy, Raheem Sterling and Reece James all omitted from the matchday squad (most for injury reasons). Even so it was shocking and embarrassing, for the Londoners, just how easily a City side without Erling Haaland or Kevin De Bruyne brushed them aside.

This match took place just 3 days after City had beat the visitors 1-0 in the league down in London and I thought Chelsea would be out for revenge and would really take the game to their hosts. However, from the first whistle it was City tore out of the traps, shoving Chelsea firmly onto the back foot and then the hosts ensured their visitors stayed there for the rest of the 90 minutes.

The match began so badly for the visitors that when they managed to get a touch after 5 minutes had already elapsed, they chose to use it to time waste. Surely that was intended to break up City’s rhythm and give them a chance to formulate a plan of how to get a foothold in the game. It didn’t work.

At the very least it gave Chelsea none of the initiative and did nothing to loosen City’s iron grip on possession. Chelsea’s timewasting had seemed to make City a little reluctant to bring the ball out of their back line though. As such Chelsea were allowed to maintain parity with their hosts for a full 23 minutes, before Riyad Mahrez shattered that illusion with a sumptuous freekick over the wall and into the top right postage stamp.

Now with the lead on the scoresheet and with Chelsea’s defensive wall crumbled to pieces City had doubled their lead before the half hour mark. They were slightly helped out by VAR gifting them a penalty for handball, from an incident that I couldn’t see properly from my vantage point high up at the other end of the ground. Julian Alvarez stepped up to slide the ball under the dive of Kepa Arrizabalaga launching himself to his right. The keeper did get a glove on it, but his wrists were weak and the ball slipped through it and into the net.

Gifting City a two-goal lead was a questionable call from Potter’s visitors as they tend to simply accelerate away from you at that point. So it proved to be here as Foden added the host’s third a full seven minutes before half time. This triggered a flood of away fans out of their seats and onto the concourse for an early half-time drink.

I was surprised to see that many of them actually returned for the second half as by this point the match was over as a contest. City could now look forward to the Fourth Round, but before that there was still 45 minutes of this victory parade for them to enjoy.

One person who had distinctly not enjoyed that first half was Chelsea manager Graham Potter, who sent his team out early for the second half with two changes to their beleaguered personnel. Mateo Kovacic and Kai Havertz were removed from the field, with Denis Zakaria and Wesley Fofana being sent on as the twin silver bullets to resurrect their team’s hopes of a result. The silver bullets failed spectacularly.

There were a few green shoots of hope in the early exchanges of the half, particularly when their first attack in forever saw Rodri pick up the first yellow of the match in the 55th minute. Those green shoots were decisively pruned by a double City substitution just before the hour mark. Rodri was taken off to protect him for the next round, Sergio Gomez joined him in making way for Kalvin Phillips and Joao Cancelo.

From this point onwards the game devolved into a monotonous groundhog day. City hogged possession and pinned Chelsea back into their penalty area without ever threatening to get the scoresheet ticking over again. The turgidity of the fare on offer could have sent any insomniac into a coma so deep they would sleep through a nuclear war.

The visitors were last season’s beaten finalists in both domestic cups, but this was the performance of a team on the brink of collapse. Sure you play in blue Chelsea, but you’re not in Everton’s position yet. Despite the dreadful attacking play from both team, Guardiola point blank refused to bring on either Haaland or DeBruyne to spice things up. I fully understand not risking your best players in a tie you’ve already decisively won, but the match was crying out for the invention and forward thinking brilliance they can provide.

Despite both teams having gone to the beach long ago, there was one last tick over of the scoreline 6 minutes from the final whistle. Don’t get too excited, it’s not a goal from some gloriously incisive open play, it’s just another City penalty. A Chelsea defender bundled an attacker going nowhere to the turf and Riyad Mahrez had the chance to add his team’s fourth goal from 12 yards. He made no mistake, slipping the ball under Kepa’s despairing dive.

That was the last notable act of a game that saw Chelsea dumped out of a competition they have reached the final of 5 times in the last 6 seasons at the first time of asking this season.

For their part City’s reward for destroying Chelsea was a home draw against Premier League leaders Arsenal in the 4th round. Since that was also on my doorstep I decided it would be rude not to go to that game too.

So less than 3 weeks later I was back at the Etihad to see who won that actual high-quality end-to-end confrontation for the purists.