Masterclass City

The teams that were expected to stop the Manchester City soccer freight train are all coming up short, and so did Tottenham today who were given a masterclass in world class football.  When David Silva could not play for City, it seemed Spurs had caught a break but he was replaced by the former Borussia Dortmund star Gundogan and it was Gundogan who opened the scoring.  From that point on Spurs were finished even if they had a couple of sniffs at the City goal, there was nothing emanating from Spurs style of play that would indicate a goal.

Manchester City not only beat Spurs at their own game, they went up a few gears to sometimes play at a world class level that even the Premier League has not witnessed before.  This was a record breaking 16 wins a row.  The best record sits at 13 wins for any top league season in Britain and yet it only equals Pep Guardiola's Barcelona record of 16 wins in a row and is still three games short of Pep's all-time World record of 19 successive wins when he managed Bayern Munich in Germany. 

If last year the joke was on Pep that he had been found wanting, with the criticism thrown at him that it was not his managerial ability that won him championships but his access to great players.  For sure he has a wealth of riches when it comes to the Manchester City owners being able to afford to buy the world's best players, but it is the manager who puts together the team on the field and in the case of Guardiola he has this year proven his ability to turn good players into great players and great players into emerging legends. 

Tottenham sink to 6th in the league after momentarily gaining a couple of much needed wins against teams that they were expected to beat, and the question coming into this game was whether the brilliance that has shone through in the Spurs side could derail this Manchester City side.  Pep after all had not won any of his previous games against a Pochettino led Tottenham, but that aberration of a statistic was put to rest with a 4-1 demolishing of Spurs.

I have never seen Tottenham players so dejected and beaten as a team, though I have seen Spurs show some maturities and lack of belief in their must win game against Chelsea when Leicester City went on to win a surprise title.  Now looking back and seeing how this City side has progressed in a year, Tottenham players will be ruing even more the wasted opportunity to win a league title 2 years ago when Spurs finished 3rd in a two horse race (Arsenal pipped them at the last game of the season to the runners-up spot).

Deli Ali and to some extent Harry Kane should have been given red cards for two very poor tackles.  If Mauricio Pochettino thinks Tottenham will have any chance of winning the title using the kind of abusive physicality that was once associated with the nasty Don Revie led Leeds United teams of the past, he should rethink that strategy. 

Dele All stamped Kevin de bruyne's ankle to the point that it was very fortunate that the world class Belgian midfielder did not suffer a broken ankle.  Both Alli and Kevin de Bruyne are considered world class players but so far Ali has not lived up-to his potential, while de Bruyne showed a far more mature mindset because immediately after that tackle, he ran up the pitch with the ball and struck a fearsome volley that Lloris could not save.  That showed the heart and mind of a champion and why City have been so transformed by Pep Guardiola - this was not Manchester City, it was Masterclass City.