The Secret to How Manchester City Beat Chelsea
Shh, don’t tell Jonathan Wilson, Zonal Marking or the trio of Richard Farley, Kartik Krisnaiyer or Laurence McKenna, but I believe that formations are sometimes overrated.
In most matches, they have a massive impact on how teams play and how they match up against each other. But in certain circumstances you may as well throw the formations out the window. Such was the case on Saturday during Manchester City’s 1-0 win against Chelsea.
The bottom line on Saturday and the reason why Manchester City won on Saturday was (1) City was more aggressive and fought for every ball, something which Chelsea has not been used to for a lot of this season, (2) Carlos Tevez scored a goal of incredible individual brilliance, (3) City did an excellent job of keeping possession by passing the ball around in key moments of the game, preventing Chelsea from regaining possession, and (4) they defended brilliantly, Nigel de Jong especially.
Nothing more. Nothing less.