Ruthless City march on with impressive win over Brighton

It was a game of 2 halves….it was an encounter that demanded city to showcase both sides of their game….let the scoreline not flatter you…the game was very much equal until the final whistle

Tactically exceptional in the first half…run ragged in the second

That first half from City was one of the best displays i have seen from a team in a long long time in the prem league. This display was better than our perfromance against chelsea, specially in terms of quick incisive passing and movement. We looked untouchable and Brighton could not even come close to us. Our 3rd goal summed up the performance in a nutshell. Grealish received the ball in lots of space on the left hand side, but the truth was 6 brighton players were back. This was one of the many examples of how much City dragged Brighton out of position all over the pitch

The 2nd half was completely the opposite of the first. At first i thought that it was due to City not having the energy levels to press, specially having played in midweek. After Lamptey came on, the situation became worse, we were not even able to get close to the Brighton players. Lamptey looked unpressable and he was just gliding through our defense and midfield

Pep Guardiola explained in his post match interview that the real reason was that Brighton changed to a diamond in the second half and City struggled to cope with it. pep brought on Fernandinho in the 65th minute and that is usually a sign that everything is not good in pep guardiola’s world. When was the last time you saw pep bringing on a CDM in the 60th min of a game

Exceptional display of character in the second half

Winning premier league titles is not all about playing beautiful football. Ask any of the City’s attacking players and thay will tell you that all of their artistry is based on working their back side off. Just to give you context, Phil foden ran 13 km yesterday. How many forwards around the world do you see going through that amount of insane work rate.

We were under the cosh for most of the second half and it almost looked impossible to get out of our own half at times. Brighton tied us up in knots playing their diamond system and for once even pep looked out of ideas. It is in situations like this that you find leaders and Ruben Dias was leading the charge, letting out passionate groans after very challenge and celebrating every interception as if he had scored a goal. It was very inspirational looking at him leading by example. This was leadership at its absolute best. You need resilience like this to challenge for the big trophies

The character you show when you are down and out is what seperates the very best teams from others and City have shown that they can do both sides of the game very well and are ready to compete with even destiny if need be to challenge for the top honours