By Syeda Munazza Rehman
It was a huge defeat for Manchester City. The performance was poor from the team. As the tournament will proceed, the competition will become tougher day by day. In the first half, Manchester City had some good chances to score but they missed them. They were not that bad as in the second half. As Pep Guardiola said,
"We created enough chances to score goals. After that, the game was over."
Fernandinho's slip and Bravo's handball, were the reasons to lost the game. But yes Barcelona played really well. Sterling praised them by saying,
"They (Messi, Saurez, Neymar) are ruthless."
Messi opened the scoring for Barcelona (17’), it was a error by Fernandinho which led to the goal. Ivan Rakitic nearly doubled the lead but Messi missed the chance. Pique was not comfortable in the start, but we did not take advantage of it. Then Claudio Bravo was red carded for handball. He handled a ball outside the box. He was shown a red card and replaced by Willy Caballero. It was 4th red card by Manchester City in last 5 games, against Barcelona.
Pep Guardiola, "Red card effectively ended contest"
Messi scored two back to back goals (61’ and 69’) to lead his team by 3-0. It was 37th hat-trick for Messi. He scored 3 goals against 2 goal-keepers in the same game. Then Neymar sealed the victory by scoring last minute goal (89’). Thus Barcelona topped the group with 9 points in 3 matches. Barcelona won 5th consecutive match against Manchester City in UEFA Champions League.
Guardiola benched Sergio Kun Aguero and got him in the last 12 minutes. What was he expecting from Aguero? To score 4 goals in just 12 minutes or what? It was the second time in successive games that Aguero had been named on the bench (Everton last Saturday). When u have taken risk to bench Aguero, may be it could work out. But this time it couldn't. If Aguero could have played from the start, may be Kevin De Bruyne could have created some chances to score and it could have been a huge difference. Kevin De Bruyne as a striker was the bad idea. I literally don’t understand this logic, putting Aguero in the dying stage of the game, to do what? Seriously, I have no idea. We should have atleast go for a draw. This was not the Manchester City we saw at the start of the season. Barcelona - the toughest opponent, they deserved to win. They were lethargic.
But on a positive note, we don't need to beat Barcelona to qualify, but we need to stand better to the later stages of Champions League. After all, we are still on top of the Premier League. That's not the end of the world, I have seen far worst performances from other big teams too. The mistakes must be identified by the coach and Manchester City can come back stronger. Hope we will recover soon. Losing to Barcelona is not a shame. We should support the team. No one expected this result. Barcelona had the upper hand right from the beginning. Unnecessary criticism and badwords couldn't change the results. We had a plan but unfortunately it did not work. As we cannot win all the games. We have to face this too. Players are capable of performing best but silly individual mistakes drowned us. It seems odd but may be Pep has a plan which unfortunately couldn't work out. We must trust him. And we do trust him. Looking forward to the next game.
It was a huge defeat for Manchester City. The performance was poor from the team. As the tournament will proceed, the competition will become tougher day by day. In the first half, Manchester City had some good chances to score but they missed them. They were not that bad as in the second half. As Pep Guardiola said,
"We created enough chances to score goals. After that, the game was over."
Fernandinho's slip and Bravo's handball, were the reasons to lost the game. But yes Barcelona played really well. Sterling praised them by saying,
"They (Messi, Saurez, Neymar) are ruthless."
Messi opened the scoring for Barcelona (17’), it was a error by Fernandinho which led to the goal. Ivan Rakitic nearly doubled the lead but Messi missed the chance. Pique was not comfortable in the start, but we did not take advantage of it. Then Claudio Bravo was red carded for handball. He handled a ball outside the box. He was shown a red card and replaced by Willy Caballero. It was 4th red card by Manchester City in last 5 games, against Barcelona.
Pep Guardiola, "Red card effectively ended contest"
Messi scored two back to back goals (61’ and 69’) to lead his team by 3-0. It was 37th hat-trick for Messi. He scored 3 goals against 2 goal-keepers in the same game. Then Neymar sealed the victory by scoring last minute goal (89’). Thus Barcelona topped the group with 9 points in 3 matches. Barcelona won 5th consecutive match against Manchester City in UEFA Champions League.
Guardiola benched Sergio Kun Aguero and got him in the last 12 minutes. What was he expecting from Aguero? To score 4 goals in just 12 minutes or what? It was the second time in successive games that Aguero had been named on the bench (Everton last Saturday). When u have taken risk to bench Aguero, may be it could work out. But this time it couldn't. If Aguero could have played from the start, may be Kevin De Bruyne could have created some chances to score and it could have been a huge difference. Kevin De Bruyne as a striker was the bad idea. I literally don’t understand this logic, putting Aguero in the dying stage of the game, to do what? Seriously, I have no idea. We should have atleast go for a draw. This was not the Manchester City we saw at the start of the season. Barcelona - the toughest opponent, they deserved to win. They were lethargic.
But on a positive note, we don't need to beat Barcelona to qualify, but we need to stand better to the later stages of Champions League. After all, we are still on top of the Premier League. That's not the end of the world, I have seen far worst performances from other big teams too. The mistakes must be identified by the coach and Manchester City can come back stronger. Hope we will recover soon. Losing to Barcelona is not a shame. We should support the team. No one expected this result. Barcelona had the upper hand right from the beginning. Unnecessary criticism and badwords couldn't change the results. We had a plan but unfortunately it did not work. As we cannot win all the games. We have to face this too. Players are capable of performing best but silly individual mistakes drowned us. It seems odd but may be Pep has a plan which unfortunately couldn't work out. We must trust him. And we do trust him. Looking forward to the next game.
Keep calm
Believe in your team
Support Manchester City
Vamos City
