For once, it did not really feel necessary to go through all the well-worn superlatives that have accompanied Manchester City on their procession to the title. That is 14 successive home wins now in the Premier League. No team have ever racked up so many passes – 902 – since the league’s inception and Ilkay Gündogan’s total of 174 was another record for the modern era.
Pep Guardiola’s side had won with something to spare and by the time it was all over, with an 18-point gap opening up at the top of the table, it was difficult to remember that it was the players wearing the darker shade of blue who were, in fact, the champions of England.
For City, that
http://www.vancouvercanucksofficialonline.com/Adidas-Alex-Burrows-Jersey honour will be theirs in a few weeks – quite possibly when Manchester United visit here on 7 April
http://www.49ersshopfootballjersey.com/Trent-Brown-Jersey.html – whereas Chelsea should be embarrassed that those kind of record statistics could happen on their watch. They barely laid a glove on the team that, lest it be forgotten, finished 15 points below them last season and it was startling to see their regression, the ultra-defensive tactics employed by Antonio Conte’s side and, more than anything, the sheer lack of gumption at 1-0 to do anything
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The only surprise was Guardiola’s men restricted themselves to Bernardo Silva’s goal 33 seconds into the second half and that, for all the intelligent promptings of Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva and the flowering brilliance of Leroy Sané, they did not make it a more emphatic win. The home side played every sort of pass – 508 in the first half alone – but there were not too many of the killer variety. This was actually
Womens Trae Waynes Jersey the first time in City’s winning run on their own ground that they have not managed at least two goals, but that seldom felt like an issue when their opponents were so vapid. No team can accumulate the kind of statistics City did here if they were being chased and harried and that, perhaps, was the most alarming aspect for Conte. N’Golo Kanté was missing because of a virus and, without their most combative player, it was startling to see the lack of enthusiasm among Chelsea’s players to make a tackle or raise their voices – anything to show they cared.
Chelsea have now lost four of their past five league games and there was a telling moment late on, just before the amount of stoppage time was announced, when Conte withdrew Eden Hazard to bring on Álvaro Morata, giving the Spaniard all of four minutes to conjure up an equaliser. Hazard walked past his manager without even exchanging a look. Too much can be made of these moments sometimes, but the strained body language was reminiscent of a similar incident involving Hazard and José Mourinho, shortly before the Portuguese was sacked from Stamford Bridge in 2015.
Conte explained afterwards that he had had to be realistic about City’s superior position and adapt his tactics accordingly. He had a point, but could they not have shown a touch more ambition? It was difficult to think of another side that has visited the Etihad Stadium this season and had so little impact, attacking-wise, and Conte’s analysis did not take into account that City, for all their counter-attacking brilliance, can often leave themselves vulnerable because of the sheer nature of Guardiola’s lineup.
City had an attacking midfielder, Oleksandr Zinchenko, at left-back. Kyle Walker is the most forward-thinking right-back in the league and Gündogan, operating as a holding midfielder, is another whose first instincts are
Greg Monroe Jersey to go forward. The trick for City’s opponents is getting the balance right between defence and attack. Yet Chelsea rarely ventured to find out why City had kept only two clean sheets in their previous nine home games and, among the blizzard of statistics confirming the home side’s superiority, one in particular jumped
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Chelsea employed the same tactical plan against Barcelona in their Champions League first leg, but it works only if the team defend at their absolute best. Instead, Andreas Christensen’s mistake let in Lionel Messi for Barcelona’s equaliser and, again, the centre-half had to accept a proportion of the blame when City scored the goal that leaves them needing four more wins to confirm the title.
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