It’s all looking very familiar already for Manchester City: one game down, one rival beaten, Erling Haaland off and running…
By Karl Matchett
…And City will soon have İlkay Gündoğan back in the team. The midfielder looks set to rejoin from Barcelona, adding to Pep Guardiola’s ranks – just a week after they showed they can cope perfectly well without Rodri, their key component in that area of the park, in dispatching Chelsea on the opening weekend.
If that performance – polished and comfortable – and result wasn’t enough to present an ominous sense of “here we go again” regarding the Cityzens, the arrival of Gündoğan for free might well do, even if Savinho’s injury at Stamford Bridge was a blow given how well he started.
Yet irrespective of fitness and transfers, City will certainly imagine they’ve been handed a rather routine start to the campaign. Chelsea are still trying to find out who they are, or rather who they are made of under Enzo Maresca, and this week’s opponents Ipswich Town have the toughest start of all having been newly promoted: they lost at home to Liverpool and now face the only side better than the Reds over the last few years.
It’s worth noting that City weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders – an xG of just 0.77 showed their clinical, not creative, edge – and it might also have been a slight surprise that Guardiola only made a single sub, clearly valuing minutes in his starters at this stage of the campaign.
Ipswich will find it tough to limit City to such a paucity of chances, however. They conceded six big chances to Liverpool, who were wasteful despite a 2-0 win, tallying 18 shots in total against them for a combined xG of 2.65. That’s despite the Tractor Boys being energetic and disciplined in the first half; a tiring side against a better one was cut apart at will from the hour mark onwards. That’s a lesson for Man City to take on board this weekend if they struggle on home soil early on, and patience has long been a virtue of Guardiola’s teams.
For the visitors, though they’ll know their season doesn’t really count as starting until next time out, hopes for a first Premier League goal – or even point – in over 20 years will come from registering almost 0.3 of their total 0.45 xG against Liverpool from set plays, while City keeper Ederson looked far from his best against Chelsea. Even so, it’s a huge ask to expect anything other than another defeat to nil.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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