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Manchester City Fan View: Citizens begin to make the extraordinary look ordinary
Manchester City won again on Sunday to further cement their position at the top of the Premier League. The 3-1 victory over Arsenal at The Etihad Stadium ensured this would be another fine day for Pep Guardiola’s men; Chelsea’s defeat of Manchester United made it even better. Just 11 games into the season, City sit eight points clear of their nearest challenger.
City beat Arsenal for only the second time in 10 fixtures between the two teams but even as a rarity, it’s not likely to be a game that lives long in the memory. That’s not because it was bad – far from it. It’s just that this team are very quickly turning the extraordinary into the ordinary, making hard fought wins appear comfortable as one victory rolls into another.
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City are sending records tumbling with each passing game. On Sunday they equalled their best ever run of consecutive league wins; this was their ninth, tying a record from 1947.
Here’s a particularly pleasing one; the eight point gap between City and United is the greatest ever points difference between first and second place after just 11 games in Premier League history. That will make unpleasant reading for United fans, which makes it all the sweeter for The Blues.
Good, but not great?
It’s increasingly hard to judge City against standards other than those they’ve set themselves. By any normal measure, this would be chalked up as a particularly impressive performance. For Pep’s boys though, this was good, but probably not great.
There are plenty of caveats to that assessment. City controlled the match for most of the 90 minutes and created plenty of chances. At times their play was scintillating and had they been three goals to the good at half time, it would not have been unfair.
Unlike other recent dominant displays, there was a spell where the visitors looked dangerous. After Kevin De Bruyne and Sergio Agüero had given City a 2-0 lead, Alexandre Lacazette stole a goal back in the 65th minute. The Blues didn’t exactly wobble, but for a few minutes there was a feeling that Arsenal could equalise. Substitute Gabriel Jesus poured cold water on that nine minutes later when he tapped in. At 3-1, the game was dead.
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City occasionally showed the effects of their midweek exertions in Italy. It’s entirely normal to feel tired after a 4-2 win against an excellent Napoli side. There were definite signs of fatigue, particularly mentally. Raheem Sterling was unusually wasteful on occasion. At one point, caught in two minds between taking a shot or setting up Sané, he dithered before fluffing his attempted assist. He’s been so clinical this season that everybody expected the net to bulge rather than the ball roll out for a throw in.
Such mistakes happen every week in the Premier League. They stand out now at City because we’ve become accustomed to them being so clinical, you expect a goal from every attack.
Despite being a touch wasteful in front of goal, this was still a dominant performance against a top half Premier League club. Arsenal came to City to attack and did their best, but other than fleeting moments of quality they never looked like doing real damage.
City can now go into the international break sitting on an eight point lead at the top of the table. 10 wins from 11 league games put the Blues in a better position than they could have reasonably hoped for when the season began.
City will fail to win a game soon, you would think. This run can’t go on forever. But with such a dominant lead, it’s already hard to see how anybody can stop them.
