Manchester City wants to and cannot, since the month of November has had a series of losses in the Premier League and could not even redeem itself on the festive Boxing Day, which they solved with a draw (1-1) at home against the team as hard-working as limited Everton, who could have beaten him in the last play of the game if they had better managed the four against one that a counterattack gave them against a broken opponent. “We have been able to score three or four goals. They have not entered, but to be honest it cannot happen that we almost lost in the last minute,” defender Manuel Akanji resolved in an interview still on the field. The champion of the last four Premier Leagues looks shattered, appearing at the game with eight absences due to injury (Ederson, Walker, Stones, Ruben Dias, Bobb, Rodri, Nunes and Grealish) and with several players missing in action. Haaland has caught the flu. He has only scored two goals that gave a point in the last nine days and against Everton he embraced disaster with a missed penalty at the beginning of the second half, just when City wanted to get up. From then on everything was a caricature of that exuberant forward and that intractable team.
1
Stefan Ortega, Rico Lewis, Josko Gvardiol, Nathan Aké (Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, min. 84), Manuel Akanji, Jérémy Doku (Kevin De Bruyne, min. 74), Savinho, Mateo Kovacic (Ilkay Gündogan, min. 84), Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden and Erling Haaland
1
Jordan Pickford, Vitalii Mykolenko, Jarrad Branthwaite, James Tarkowski, Séamus Coleman (Nathan Patterson, min. 89), Idrissa Gueye, Abdoulaye Doucouré, Orel Mangala, Iliman Ndiaye (Jesper Lindstrøm, min. 80), Dominic Calvert-Lewin (Armando Broja , min. 69) and Jack Harrison
Goals
1-0 min. 13: Bernardo Silva. 1-1 min. 35: Iliman Ndiaye
Referee Simon Hooper
yellow cards
Mykolenko (min. 41), Coleman (min. 51), Orel Mangala (min. 78), Jarrad Branthwaite (min. 86), Foden (min. 93)
As affected as they are, City were not even able to maintain an initial lead, a fortunate goal that came after a duality between Doku and Bernardo Silva that ended with a cross deflected by Branthwaite into the net after the ball traced a diabolical effect to bring joy to the Etihad. For better or worse the team generated attacking play, especially from Savinho’s dribbling. In the end, the Brazilian’s was the only alternative that a flattened team gave itself to, in which not only Haaland is unrecognizable. Neither Foden, nor Bernardo Silva, nor the downtrodden De Bruyne and Gündogan, who came off the bench in the final stretch of the game, contribute ten percent of their potential. The Portuguese interior missed a chance to take an encouraging two-goal lead to the scoreboard by rushing into a complicated shot. City have conceded a goal in twelve of their last thirteen games and only kept their goal unbeaten in the only one they won, against Nottingham. At this point he is in a state of nerves that puts him under stress in every option. Silva, so often extraordinary, failed and almost immediately Ndiaye equalized for Everton with ten minutes left before the break. “Our first half was brilliant,” Pep Guardiola said in his comments after the game.
Savinho forced a penalty called against Mykolenko, his troubled marker. Haaland missed from eleven meters and scored the second rebound offside and almost pouting. And City once again collapsed, unable to give speed to the ball and generate advantages when circulating it. Guardiola’s team ended up placing crosses into the area. Everton entrenched themselves, and they could have won, but they didn’t deserve it either. And yet he celebrated the draw as a victory while his rival returns to the couch to try to understand, once and for all, why if the league had started in November he would now be in relegation positions to the Championship after adding just 5 points out of a possible 27. But Pep Guardiola’s message tries to be, at least outwardly, constructive: “We could have lost on the final counterattack. “We continue to learn.”
