Arsenal were the only team to win and to move ahead of the rest of the teams at the top.
Prior to the City v Chelsea match you could find many funny statistics about Guardiola’s experience as a coach; he had coached 1011 top-level games before the match, whereas McFarlane had none — which may be both the first and last match of McFarlane’s career as Chelsea’s caretaker coach, since the new head coach has arrived.
City started off strong with their squad.
City had key players missing due to suspensions and injuries (Caicedo was suspended, Cucurella, Fofana and Sanchez were injured, and Colwill has never been heard of again). There was no doubt that City were going to take charge early on. The first real scoring opportunity belonged to Chelsea — on 20 minutes Estêvão hit the ball hard from the penalty spot (actually harder than that — even closer to the penalty spot) and Gvardiol made an excellent block.
That was all she wrote. Foden had a clear scoring chance within moments of City’s first attack. Then Haaland hit the post — and at that moment it seemed as if Badiashile was holding onto the Norwegian’s right leg — although Haaland is a left footed player hahaha. In the first half Chelsea simply cleared the ball any where and City immediately started their next attack. So on 42 minutes City finally broke through. Reijnders did it — he smacked the ball into the far top corner from under Badiashile.
At half time Chelsea were lucky to only trail City by one.
The guests obviously needed to do something differently at the break — because they were clearly going to play much, much poorer than they did in the first half. As a result Estêvão did not come back out in the second half — Santos replaced him.
First serious scoring opportunity in the second half — once again it belonged to Chelsea.
A fast counter resulted in Neto shooting from a perfect position — 9 metres directly in front of the goal. The ball sailed just above the crossbar.
Not long after that City were forced to replace a defender — Gvardiol hurt his knee. He was unable to continue, leaving the field with the aid of the doctor on one side and James on the other. Husanov had to go to centre-back. It didn’t change the flow of the game however — City continued to press the visitors heavily — Chelsea waited for counter attacks.
Man City and Chelsea – football.london
It wasn’t until the 72nd minute that Chelsea finally had their first true shot on target — courtesy of substitute Delap.
Then Delap created a problem for himself when he fell into a scuffle after he had shoved Husanov into the advertising hoardings after a loose ball was fought for. The melee delayed two minutes of play — and the guests still needed to score.
It appeared as if City were going to get out of the game comfortably.
There was only one chance late in the game — when first Palmer, then Delap missed connecting in the box. It looked as though that was that.
However, as we have seen throughout this Premier League season you need to watch the games right down to the final whistle. And so Chelsea snatched a draw from City in injury time via Fernández. On 90+4 Fernández eventually managed to bundle the ball over the line on his third attempt.
In doing so Londoners denied City the three points despite being in every possible disadvantageous situation — after Enzo Maresca’s sacking, after suspensions and injuries, and after a rather messy performance overall.
As a result Chelsea were able to catch up to Manchester United and surpass them in the table based on better goal difference.
And City are now 6 points behind Arsenal.
