This season one team has become notorious nationwide for late collapses and this weekend Manchester City were once again at the centre of a devastating collapse.
Unfortunately this time around it wasn’t the home faithful left devastated at the Etihad, as City collapsed the fairy-tale Fa-Cup progress of the Plymouth pilgrims.
Being from the football wasteland of Devon and sacking their ex-boss, Wayne Rooney, on the eve of their visit to the Brentford’s fortress, having not won away from home all season, few gave the Pilgrims a hope in hell on their 3rd round visit to West London…. then a miracle happened.
That victory looked to be a mere blip in their hellish form, as they picked up a mere 2 points from their following four games in January. Then February came and with their 4th round tie against run away Premier League leaders Liverpool looming they masterminded a late comeback victory against West Brom to launch them into it.
Sure that made them unbeaten in 2 games, but they were still expected to be destroyed by the surging scousers who had won their last 4 domestic matches and were fresh off destroying Spurs in the League Cup Semi-Final.
Once again a miracle was required but this time with a partisan home crowd at their backs and once again a miracle was delivered for the crusading pilgrims.
With miracle 2 secured it was back to the league for the mighty green and straight into pulverising Millwall 5-1 at Home Park just 3 days after conquering the Merseyside goliath.
True they followed that up by securing a paltry 2 draws from 3 matches, but this was an improvement on their previous form and has even seen them haul themselves off the bottom of the table. The fairy-tale was on and the next goliath on the list was the wounded champions Man City, but a beast is at it’s most dangerous when it is wounded.
Plymouth would wound it further before reaping it’s wrath.
When Maksym Talovierov headed home from a corner in the 38th minute the pilgrims thought another miracle was on the cards. It would have been a personal miracle for the defender himself to be the deliverer of the miracle as he only joined the pilgrims in January and has family in Kyiv who could have done with the good news.
Unfortunately the miracle was not to be a three-peat as that goal awakened the beast and before half-time it had drawn itself level through 19-year old Nico O’Reilly, who doubled his tally to draw the beast into the lead and bring the miracle collapsing down on the Pilgrims heads with 14 minutes left in proceedings.
The final nail in the miracle’s coffin was hammered home by Kevin De-Bruyne in the final minute, but by then the damage had been done by one of City’s new generation of world beaters who has had no part in their collapses and will cause many more for opponents in the coming decade.
Plymouth’s pilgrims may have headed home with their hopes destroyed but with the momentum of their miraculous cup-run fuelling their belief that miracles exist they have pulled themself off the foot of the championship table and have 11 games to bridge the 6 points still separating them from safety.
Miracles can happen and maybe the collapsing of their FA-Cup fairy-tale is so they can focus on making the miracle of survival a reality. I’ll be praying for the pilgrims.
As for the task of collapsing Man City’s miracle resurgence, that now falls on Plymouth’s south coast neighbours AFC Bournemouth. From Devon to Dorset the torch passes.
The Football tourist 