Man City 0-1

Telegraph :

Manchester City 1 Chelsea 0: Bernardo Silva strikes as champions hand over title with barely a fight


Jason Burt


This was the Premier League champions against the champions-elect and the gulf felt even greater than the extraordinary 25 points that now separates fifth-placed Chelsea from top-of-the-table Manchester City.

One of the songs sung by the City fans is “we’re not really here”, a reminder of the days in the late 1990s when they were a third-tier team, but it was Chelsea who were not really here for this fixture.

Their travelling supporters, who sarcastically cheered when their team finally won a corner after 42 minutes, will have wondered what this was all about because it was a 1-0 hammering with the reaction of their star player, Eden Hazard, summing it all up.

Asked to play, again, as a ‘false’ number nine he ambled around disbelievingly as the ball sailed over his head until he was eventually substituted late on. Hazard then failed to acknowledge head coach Antonio Conte and although the Italian will point to the narrowness of the scoreline as some kind of misguided justification for his approach it felt more like a relegation team arriving at the Etihad than one which won the league last season.


Pep Guardiola had hailed Conte as a master tactician but there was nothing masterful about these tactics. It was five-at-the-back and try and hold on, to try and frustrate a vastly superior opponent for as long as possible. Although Conte may also point to the fact that it was a defensive error, by Andreas Christensen, that led to the only goal.

But that masks the poverty of his team’s performance and this result leaves them five points behind fourth placed Tottenham Hotspur in the fight to qualify for the Champions League. A fight they are losing.

Damagingly for Conte it was a fourth successive away defeat, and a fourth loss in their last five league games.

That would suggest he is under even more pressure but it is pretty certain that he is leaving at the end of this season, come what may, and he did little to suggest otherwise. The problem for Chelsea is the effect this has on the rest of their campaign.


For City it is 14 home wins in a row; they are 18 points clear at the top and need just 12 more points from nine games to be champions – although, probably, only 11 points given their vastly superior goal difference which should have been enhanced further in this match. Or this mis-match.

City also set a new record of 902 passes completed in a Premier League match, with an astonishing 68 per cent of those in the Chelsea half, and with their ‘holding’ midfielder – not that he had much defensive work to do – Ilkay Gundogan - having 181 touches. Again, the most ever in a Premier League game. Usually such statistics are compiled against relegation fodder. Not Champions League teams.

The one surprise was that City only had 71.1 per cent possession. It felt far more than that while, for Chelsea, the sight of Christensen, Antonio Rudiger or Cesar Azpilicueta hoofing the ball aimlessly up the pitch as they tried to relief the pressure was dispiriting. Sure they missed N’Golo Kante, who had to pull out through illness despite travelling to the stadium, but that only goes so far while it should be pointed out that Conte sanctioned the purchases of both Alvaro Morata and Olivier Giroud who only came on late into this game.


The fact is Conte was more concerned about not being thumped than trying to win and that is an indictment in itself. It is becoming a common theme in this league, when teams face City, but that is no excuse.

Chelsea are the champions. They should be going out on their shields; not like this.

So it was little more than a glorified game of attack versus defence which, once City scored, had no drama attached to it. The pace even dropped to pedestrian mid-way through the second-half and although Guardiola celebrated exuberantly at the end that said it all about how close they are to lifting the crown than beating Chelsea.

They should have been out-of-sight before, barely 30 seconds into the second-half, Gundogan played the ball forward and Christensen made a hash of clearing it from inside his own penalty area, striking it against Azpilicueta before it ran to Sergio Aguero.

The striker quickly slid a pass to the overlapping David Silva who sent in a low skimming cross to beyond the far post. Marcos Alonso was caught out as Bernardo Silva arrived and the Portuguese shot – shinned it – back across Thibaut Courtois and into the net.

Bernardo had spurned first-half chances while Azipilicueta had denied Leroy Sane, again at his elusive best, as he deftly cushioned a deep free-kick by Kevin De Bruyne and then struck a powerful shot beyond Courtois only for the defender to block on the goal-line. Courtois seized the rebound.

Maybe Chelsea had one chance. Soon after City scored they countered with the ball played out to Victor Moses but as Oleksandr Zinchenko attempted to cover Moses sliced his shot high and wide.

And that, pretty much, was it. Chelsea, for the first time since Opta started compiling such statistics in 2004, did not have a single shot on target. They had two, in total, both off target. At the same time City did not spurn a host of chances. But at least, unlike Chelsea, they were here and they played like champions.



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Mail:

Manchester City 1-0 Chelsea: Bernardo Silva scores winner seconds after half-time as Pep Guardiola's side close in on Premier League title


By Martin Samuel


Well, it had to happen eventually. Manchester City involved in a game that was not entirely scintillating, and did not have observers leafing through the dictionary for fresh litanies of superlatives.

They still won, though, and are now 18 points clear, so not much else has changed. The title could yet be wrapped up in the first April weekend, an astonishing achievement, this being a league that six clubs, at least, start the season thinking they can win. One of them, of course, is Chelsea, but they did not play like that on Sunday.

They did not play like reigning champions, either. They played like a team that thought it was second best, with no greater ambition than to contain and swindle a draw. It was terribly dispiriting to watch. Chelsea are better than this; or at least they should be.


So the anti-climactic nature of this match wasn’t really Manchester City’s fault.

Chelsea came with so little positive spark that this deteriorated into nothing more than a training exercise for long periods, and was played at a similar place. One Arsenal fan brought a duvet to keep out the cold when City travelled south last Thursday, and their goalkeeper Ederson could have done the same.

Indeed, had he then strung up a hammock between the posts and bedded down for the evening, it really wouldn’t have mattered.

Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso, the full-backs, were responsible for Chelsea’s two shots and neither was on target. Eden Hazard was, for 78 minutes, the lone front man, a false nine, yet the service to him was so poor he was forced to come deeper and deeper, becoming a false ten, and on occasions a false eight, too.


Last week it was said he was tired – so why burn him out on this doomed mission? Might Olivier Giroud not have been a better target man? Might Hazard have been spared this excruciating ordeal?

Say what you like about Jose Mourinho, he never sent a Chelsea team out to play like this. He may have been pragmatic on occasions, but he was never so remorselessly shorn of intent.

And if this was how Antonio Conte wished to play, why waste such gifted players? Why bother with Hazard, or Willian, or Pedro or Cesc Fabregas? What did they have to gain from this?

Yes, the illness that deprived him of N’Golo Kante may have interfered with his game plan, but it wasn’t as if it denied Chelsea a great attacking force, making defence the only option. All Kante would have delivered is a better, more solid version of this, the belt to the braces.



It wasn’t as if there was a freewheelin’ Chelsea waited to break out from this strait-jacket. Manchester City went a goal up 35 seconds after half-time, and it took Conte until the 78th minute to bring a striker on, in Giroud. That says everything.

It was insulting, really, to consider he might think so little of the potential of his own players that he considers this the only way to approach City.

Conte may think Pep Guardiola fortunate to have the backing of his board and such a generous transfer budget, but that is not excuse. Chelsea are not Stoke, or some lower tier inferior.

They were champions last season when City had seven of Sunday's starters on the staff – albeit Ilkay Gundogan injured and Oleksandr Zinchenko out on loan.

Far worse teams than Chelsea – who had the better of Barcelona at Stamford Bridge recently, and were unlucky to draw, do not forget – have been more adventurous than the champions were here. Bristol City thought bigger in their two EFL Cup semi-finals.

Newcastle might get away with a negative approach as they scrap for survival, their players might recognise their own limitations against the best, understand why Rafa Benitez does not wish to go toe to toe at Liverpool; but Chelsea are not like that.

Hazard or Fabregas will not see themselves as inferiors, will not understand being asked to play this way. Withdrawn late in the game, Hazard looked every bit as alienated as he did at Leicester in Mourinho’s last season, and one wonders whether this match could mark a change in his relationship with this manager, too.



Alone upfront against Barcelona is one thing; alone at Manchester City, and left to chase high balls from bored, disaffected team-mates quite another. Chelsea looked as if they were going through the motions for long spells, shadowing City as they controlled the ball. Opta began measuring passing statistics in season 2003-04; since then, City’s total on Sunday, 902, is the most recorded in one match.

Yet few looked like piercing the darker blue barrier.

Still, the best team won. It could be said the only team won – the only team interested in winning, anyway. It was a scrappy goal, too. Andreas Christensen lost the ball and Sergio Aguero played David Silva in on the left. His cross was not cut out in the middle, but was met by Bernardo Silva at the far post.

He did not strike it cleanly, but goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois had lost his footing changing direction in the Manchester rain and the ball skipped over his head as he struggled to recover.

There really wasn’t much else of note to report. David Silva almost made it two after 56 minutes with a shot that Courtois saved at his near post, and there were a couple of first-half chances, including one from Leroy Sane that Cesar Azpilicueta cleared off the line, but such was the paucity of Chelsea’s objective – and let’s hope this was not as dry run for their game plan at Barcelona later this month – that a second was not needed.


True, Chelsea now have the best aggregate against City of any Premier League team that has played them over two games this season – just a two-goal deficit – but they have taken zero points from those matches, so is that really such a boast?

Had Alonso’s late shot gone in, of course, arch-pragmatists will have argued the end justified the means. Yet that case can only be made with the result as mitigation. Chelsea did not get it.

They are beginning to lose touch with the top four, and sit five points off Tottenham, who they must beat at Stamford Bridge to stand a chance of reversing those positions. This was hardly the preparation for such an occasion.

Now is the time for bravery, for boldness, to take the risks that have seen City go 18 points clear. Chelsea were timid in the extreme; they did not get what they came for, but they got what they were worth.


Man City: Ederson, Walker, Otamendi, Laporte, Zinchenko (Danilo 87), De Bruyne, Gundogan, David Silva (Foden 90+3), Bernardo Silva, Aguero (Jesus 84), Sane.

Subs not used: Bravo, Kompany, Stones, Toure.

Goals: B Silva 46

Bookings: Zinchenko, Gundogan


Chelsea: Courtois, Azpilicueta, Christensen, Rudiger, Moses, Fabregas, Drinkwater, Alonso, Willian (Giroud 78), Hazard (Morata 90), Pedro (Emerson 81).

Subs not used: Chalobah, Caballero, Zappacosta, Cahill.

Goals: None

Bookings: Rudiger

Referee: Michael Oliver

Attendance: 54,328