Manchester City park their £200m bus
100 comments January 6th, 2011
Apparently Mancini played the Man City players this inspirational video before the game last night
Arsenal 0 – 0 Man City
Highlights | Arsene’s reaction
As Jose Mourinho once put it, Manchester City’s tactics last night equivocated to “parking the bus”. The thing is that £200m is an awful lot of money to spend on a bus. Even the pimpiest of pimped-out rides would struggle to reach that pricetag. In fact, you could probably get an alternative that would do the job, much cheaper.
That’s what frustrates about City. If the extent of your ambition is to put ten men behind the ball and hope the opposition don’t get the solitary fortunate ricochet or moment of genius they need to beat you, then you might aswell use any old footballers. I’ve seen sides from one or two divisions below us and do what City did. The difference in the result? The width of the post. City do have good defenders – I’m not denying that – but in this particular game they were downright lucky to escape defeat.
If this Manchester City team were to win the Premier League, it would be a bad thing for English football. Their display last night was the most negative I have ever seen by a top team at the Emirates. Even Mourinho’s Chelsea teams played with exciting wingers who could break at pace.
And what should shame City most of all is that I’ve seen sides with far less attacking resource in the their squad – the likes of West Brom – come to Arsenal, have a go, and win. It would be easier to justify City’s tactics if they were coming to an impenetrable fortress. But let’s be honest, the Emirates is far from that. City have no excuse, other than fear. Their display was plain cowardly.
In many ways, we did ourselves no favours by exacerbating those fears with a blistering opening ten minutes. Once City staggered, punchdrunk, away from that early onslaught, almost disbelieving that they were still level, Mancini’s mind was made up. The handbrake was pulled, and the ignition was switched off.
Our frustration is tinged with regret. Every Arsenal fan knows that we should have beaten City last night. That superb start brought with it a couple of chances that could have forced the opposition to come out and play, opening themselves up and making the game the sort of contest in which we prosper best.
The most notable chance of the 90 minutes came in the first 90 seconds. Samir Nasri swaggered between two defenders and fed Jack Wilshere on the left-hand side of the box. He seemed caught in two minds about whether to shoot or square, and the resulting cross-shot just evaded the sliding efforts of Robin van Persie.
The let-offs continued to come. Van Persie turned and struck the post, then Walcott spun inside the area and fired agonizingly across goal. Before the half was out, Cesc had joined Robin in striking a post with a beautifully placed effort from the edge of the area.
At half-time, City could scarcely believe they were still in the contest. Mancini issued his default instructions (“Never try and score”) and City emerged as a more organised, defiant unit. Kolo Toure played well at his former home, and Joe Hart produced on super save to deny a Van Persie piledriver.
Arsenal tired and grew frustrated. Andrey Arshavin was thrown on for Theo Walcott but made no discernible impact – the same goes for Nicklas Bendtner, who was surprisingly introduced ahead of Marouane Chamakh.
Arsenal’s frustration was manifested most plainly in the silly sending off of Bacary Sagna, who held his forehead against Zabaleta’s in that odd ‘just about to kiss’ way that Premier League footballers are inclined to do. It wasn’t a headbutt, but it wasn’t clever either, and Sagna will now sit out three games as consequence.
On a night when Chelsea and Spurs were also beaten, Manchester United were the big winners. Given City’s tendency for conservatism, I suspect United see Arsenal as their strongest challengers. Winning their game in hand, however, would take them seven points clear: a healthy margin indeed.
Still, there’s a lot of football to be played, and we mustn’t allow City’s negativity to infect our assessment of our own performance. Wilshere and Song were again outstanding, whilst the attacking quartet of Nasri, Fabregas, Van Persie and Walcott were mesmerising in the first half. It’s hard to talk about the goalkeeper and defence, as they were barely called upon.
After four games in ten days, we’ve git a bit of a break from our Premier League campaign now. On Saturday we face Leeds in the FA Cup before going to Ipswich in the first leg of the Carling Cup semi-final. The squad will be rotated, but results must remain good. In the short-term, momentum is important. In the medium-term, a trophy or too would be lovely.
A final note on last night’s game: defensive displays like City’s will always divide pundits, but when even the miserly Alan Hansen says that we emerged from the game looking like the most credible challenger to United, you know we’ve done something right.
Whatever happens in the title race, I can say with absolute confidence that I am proud of the performances my team put in and the way they try to play the game. What’s more, inevitably I enjoy watching them. They entertain me. Which, at the end of the day, is what this is really about.
Good old Arsenal. Keep doing your thing. When we do get the break we need, it’ll be so worth it.
