Category Archives: 2021-22

The League Cup: City Women

On this day (March 5) in 2022 Manchester City’s women’s team faced Chelsea in the 11th final of the FA Women’s League Cup at Wimbledon. This was Chelsea’s third appearance in a League Cup final and they had won the previous two editions. City, who had won the competition three times, contested their fifth League Cup final. It was the first time the women’s teams had met in a major cup final. Manchester’s Blues won the final 3-1 with goals from Weir (49 & 69) and White (58).

You can read the BBC material on this final here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/60088827

The League Cup is a hugely important trophy to Manchester’s Blues and to commemorate that success here’s a piece looking at the history of the competition from Manchester City’s view point. The League Cup, sponsored by Continental during the seasons Manchester City first won the competition and therefore known as the Continental Cup, was the first national competition won after the relaunch of the women’s team. As such it became highly significant.

City supporter David Sheel explains how the first final was viewed: “The club put on some coaches for us. It was night match – that doesn’t help. It was played at Adams Park, Wycombe Wanderers’ ground. There were two coaches. The first was full of parents and young academy girls and a few supporters with the second just supporters. All free. We went – sadly a lot couldn’t go because it was a week night – and we played against Arsenal. A team full of established top players who had beat us 4-0 at City in the League. But, like semi final win over Chelsea at Hyde, there was just something about that night. Arsenal were all over us at times and did everything but score. Our defence was outstanding but we also had a few chances at the other end. Got to half-time nil-nil and you’re thinking ‘just one chance, please.’ I can remember the goal… Joey Johnston went down the line, whipped the ball in and Izzy Christiansen, the smallest player on the pitch, headed it in. There were four of us sat together – the coaches had arrived just before kick off so we’d had to leg it in and grab the first spaces you could find. The four of us jumped up but we were surrounded by Arsenal fans. They started giving us some abuse. The goal was in the 73rd minute and we hung on. 

“When the final whistle went I was as proud of that achievement as I was in 2011 when the men won the FA Cup. To me personally it was the same. I never ever felt I’d see the men win anything in my life and then the same was true with the women. I was so proud of the club. After that they did the trophy presentation and I picked up some of the tinsel that got fired out of the cannons when they did the presentation. All the players came over to the side afterwards. Jill Scott was showing me her medal. They shared it with the fans. They even let me put my hands on the trophy. We were all there together. A bit like the men and their success in 2011 I think this told the outside world that City were here to do business. Inside the club the ambition was there but until you win a major trophy the other clubs may not take you seriously.”

When I interviewed her in 2018-19 player Abbie McManus remembered: “That feeling of beating Arsenal, who have dominated women’s football for years and years. At the time we were perceived to be a bunch of nobodies that have just thrown a team together and everyone was saying you’re just throwing money at it. I didn’t actually play that game. I got sent off the game before so I missed it! But watching the game and the feeling of that win. Being the underdog. I don’t think that feeling will ever come back.”

Izzy Christiansen scored in the final and told me how she felt: “An amazing feeling to score in that game. There’s no other words to describe it. It was just probably one of the best days of my life, the fact that the ball hit the back of the net. The fact that it meant that we, as a team, and a club, got our first trophy. That kind of set us off on our journey really.  We had a taste of success at the start and that’s where we’ve stayed, wanting success.”

The Blues went on to win the Continental Cup in 2014, 2016, 2019 and then 2022. City’s finals:

2014 City 1 Arsenal 0

Goalscorer: Christiansen (73)

Attendance: 3,697 (Adams Park, High Wycombe).

Referee Nigel Lugg (Surrey)

2016 City 1 Birmingham City 0 (aet)

Goalscorer: Bronze (105)

Attendance: 4,214  (Academy Stadium, Manchester). 

Referee Rebecca Welch (Durham)

2019 Arsenal 0 City 0 (City won 4-2 on penalties)

Attendance: 2,424  (Bramall Lane, Sheffield). 

Referee Lucy Oliver (Newcastle)

2022 City 3 Arsenal 1

Goalscorers: Caroline Weir (49 & 69) and Ellen White (58).

Attendance: 8,004

Referee Lisa Benn

You can find out more about the history of City Women in my book Manchester City Women: An Oral History. Follow the link for details of how to buy:

Shop

Foden’s Late Winner

On this day (26 February) in 2022 Phil Foden’s late winner for Manchester City at Everton gave Manchester’s Blues a six-point lead over Liverpool at the top of the Premier League.

The game had followed a defeat to Tottenham and some had suggested the initiative in the title race would soon switch to Liverpool but Foden’s goal ensured City retained in control. Everton fans thought their club should have had a penalty as they felt City midfielder Rodri handled a dropping ball inside the area, but a VAR check determined he hadn’t.

Despite considerable noise from the home fans, the first half had been fairly even but in the second City demonstrated their superiority time and time again. Everton ‘keeper Jordan Pickford had to make a number of significant saves, including a double stop to deny Kevin de Bruyne and Bernardo Silva in quick succession. It looked like City were going to be frustrated but in the 82nd minute a Bernardo Silva cross was blocked but not cleared well enough and Phil Foden nipped in, rounded Pickford and scored the only goal of the game.

After the game City manager Pep Guardiola commented that after a difficult first half City: ‘Deserved [the] win and three more points. Goodison Park has always been so difficult. When a striker go with Rodri and they defend really well it is always difficult. You have to find the situations and the second half was much better. We moved the ball a bit quicker, we attacked quicker. The second half they were a little more tired. We were solid behind, we don’t concede much.’

There had been a show of solidarity with Ukraine, where war was taking place following an invasion by Russia. The City players wore Tee-shirts with the Ukraine flag on the front and the message ‘no war’ on the back and City’s Zinchenko received some good applause from both sets of fans as he warmed up as substitute. Pep: ‘What a moment. Thank you so much for all the people. Zinchenko was very pleased. He was warming up. It means what the people want to say. That is why thank you so much for the all the people here and we are looking forward to the next week at home in the derby we can show to Zinchenko and to the Ukraine citizens, what we want.’

The City victory meant that they had their last ten matches against Everton in all competitions, making it Pep Guardiola’s joint-longest winning run against an opponent in his managerial career (equalling 10 v Watford). Highlights of the game here:

https://www.mancity.com/citytv/mens/everton-manchester-city-premier-league-extended-highlights-63781485

Midfielder Kevin De Bruyne made his 200th Premier League appearance in this game and his 80 assists was the most of any player within their first 200 matches in the competition’s history.

Everton’s manager was the former City player Frank Lampard who had been appointed on 31 January 2022. He commented: ‘One of the reasons I took the job was my feeling of growing up and understanding the history of the club and seeing them as First Division champions and playing here and feeling what the crowd can do. They affect games and I love working in those circumstances. The next two or three weeks will be hard but from what I have seen today, if we keep doing that we will be alright.”

Within a year there were demonstrations against Everton’s owners and Lampard was dismissed.

Subscribe to get access – Annual

If you have enjoyed this why not subscribe and read all the great content on my site. It costs £20 a year (access everything including all the articles, interviews, talks and books already posted) or £3 per month (see below).

Subscribe

Subscribe to get access – Monthly

If you have enjoyed this why not subscribe and read all the great content on my site. It costs £3 a month (access everything posted since 1 October 2022 including articles, interviews, talks and books; cancel anytime) or £20 a year (see above).

Subscribe

Manchester City v RB Leipzig

It’s RB Leipzig v Manchester City tonight (22 February 2023) in the Champions League. The first time these two sides met competitively came on 15 September 2021 at the Etihad Stadium in the competition’s group stage (Group A). It was Pep Guardiola’s 300th game as manager and City achieved a 6-3 victory which meant that the Blues became the quickest English team to achieve 50 wins in the Champions League. Nice work!

Nathan Ake opened the scoring with a powerful header in the 16th minute, becoming  the tenth different City player to score that season. The lead was increased twelve minutes later when Nordi Mukiele scored what was described by the BBC as a ‘calamitous own goal… The France defender got his angles horribly wrong as his attempted header back to his keeper following Kevin de Bruyne’s delivery ended up in the net.’

Nkunku scored for Leipzig three minutes before half time but City restored their two goal lead by half time with Riyad Mahrez netting a penalty (45+2) awarded after Lukas Klostermann handled.

Leipzig’s Nkunku headed home his second to reduce the deficit six minutes after the restart, but City hit back five minutes later as Jack Grealish scored with a delightful finish on his Champions League debut. Afterwards he commented about the whole experience: ‘I loved it. I’ve been waiting a while. The past few weeks, I couldn’t wait for this game. It’s a great night.’

Talking about the goal Grealish said: ‘The ball came to me and when I’m in that position, running into the area I’d back myself one on one against anyone to have a go and it paid off. I had a few in the first half that were blocked.’

Former Paris St-Germain player Nkunku scored again (73rd minute) to complete his hat-trick, but Joao Cancelo added a stunning 25 yard effort for City two minutes later. The former City player Angelino was dismissed for a second bookable offence four minutes later and then substitute Gabriel Jesus tapped in at the far post to make it six for City with only five minutes of normal time remaining.

The match ended 6-3 but in truth City’s victory was much more convincing than the three conceded goals suggest. Grealish loved the whole experience of his first Champions League match: ‘It was one of those games. It had absolutely everything. In the end we’re delighted to get the win against a good team full of energy and young players… I’m delighted to come away with the three points – and the goal and assist… I went to check the result from the other game [Club Bruges 1-1 PSG] and it shows anything can happen in the Champions League. It’s why it’s such a wonderful competition.’

Leipzig’s hat-trick scorer Christopher Nkunku was not as positive as Grealish however: ‘Every mistake was punished. We made a lot of individual errors. I scored three goals but every time they scored again right away. We needed to show more concentration. We knew the quality Manchester City have.’

For City boss Pep Guardiola there was disappointment that three goals had been conceded and he admitted: ‘Leipzig never give up. They have a special way to attack. They play all or nothing. You never have the feeling it’s over. We scored a few minutes after they scored… and it helped us a lot. They have a young team, so aggressive, so strong. A fantastic team. Leipzig give a good message to football. The quality of the players was better today and that’s why we won.’

5-0 Champions League Win

On 15 February 2022 Manchester City defeated Sporting 5-0 in the Champions League game at Lisbon. A crowd of 48,129 witnessed the game and you can see highlights here:

https://www.mancity.com/citytv/mens/sporting-man-city-champions-league-highlights-63780543

The victory took City through to the quarter finals and the goalscorers were: Riyad Mahrez, Bernardo Silva (2), Phil Foden and Raheem Sterling. It was an incredible performance and Bernardo, whose every touch was booed by the home fans, was particularly impressive that night.

Were you there? Feel free to leave your comments on the game in the comments area below. Thanks

Goalscoring Nationalities

Prior to this weekend’s game with Spurs, Manchester City have had players from 41 different nations score for the Blues in the Premier League. Can you remember them all? The following 1200 word article tells the story…

Subscribe to get access

Read this content when you subscribe today. It costs £20 a year or £3 per month (see below). Annual subscribers access everything posted to the site including interviews, talks, books and hundreds of articles plus everything posted during your subscription.

Subscribe

Subscribe to get access

Monthly subscribers (£3, cancel anytime) get access to everything posted to the site since 1 October 2022 plus everything posted during your subscription.

Subscribe

Newcastle 0 Manchester City 4

On this day last year (Sunday 19 December 2021) Manchester City (the Premier League leaders) defeated Newcastle 4-0 at St James’ Park. City were on a run of seven consecutive league wins but this was not the easy, walkover the score suggests.

Ruben Dias scored an early goal with the second coming from Joao Cancelo – an incredible strike. In the second-half, a Riyad Mahrez volley made it 3-0 and the fourth came from Raheem Sterling.

Here are the highlights:

https://www.mancity.com/citytv/mens/newcastle-united-0-4-manchester-city-extended-highlights-63775519

MCFC Record Profits

The Manchester City FC annual report is out. Record profits of £41.7m as the club continues to find trophy success and improve its financial position. That investment seems to be paying off a bit now, hey? You can read all the details here:

https://www.mancity.com/annualreport2022/ceos-message/

Raheem Sterling

I’m sad to see Raheem Sterling is leaving Manchester City but I do wish him well for the future of course. For the final MCFC match programme of the season I included a small piece on Sterling and his status/achievements at the Etihad within my regular feature. To mark his departure I’m posting what I said only a couple of months ago here. Enjoy!

Here’s the unedited original piece as it was written: I want to focus on one of our current players who has been establishing himself as one of our greatest goal scorers of all time. In recent weeks we have rightly remembered the goalscoring exploits of our legendary hero Sergio Agüero, especially that memorable day ten years ago. These achievements have to be celebrated and remembered but we should also look at our current goal scorers and recognise what they are achieving too. Legends like Agüero do not come along every day but in today’s squad we have players whose achievements are way ahead of the majority of other players who have preceded them. 

Although we may celebrate odd goals and moments, we don’t often celebrate the achievements of our players while they are playing, especially as we know we have a squad of talented players helping the club challenge for success. However, I think it’s worth pausing to recognise the achievements of Raheem Sterling during his time at City. Sterling is now the second highest scorer for City in the modern era.

For years our top ten goal scorers of all-time list was fairly static. In fact, before Agüero, the most recent player to enter our top ten goal scorers’ chart was Colin Bell, who had followed Francis Lee into the table around fifty years ago. Agüero, of course, is our number one goal scorer of all time now, followed by 1930s stars Eric Brook & Tommy Johnson, then Colin Bell. At the time of going to press Raheem Sterling is 11th in the list after scoring 131 City goals, only one behind Billy Gilliespie and Fred Tilson, our joint ninth highest goal scorers.

We really should celebrate the career statistics of Sterling. It’s an amazing achievement to have eclipsed ALL but the current top ten prior to today’s game. I’m sure some critics will say ‘ah, but how does his scoring ratio compare?’ Well, sadly, for the majority of players in City’s top ten we are unable to have accurate statistics on the number of minutes played to allow a direct comparison, but we do have goals per game ratio statistics. Sterling’s goals to game ratio is 0.388, which is better than Colin Bell’s ratio of 0.305 goals per game and Eric Brook’s 0.359. Not too shabby then, especially when you consider the nature of modern-day squad football meant that Sterling either came on as substitute or was substituted in over 150 of his 338 games too! 

Title Winning Goal From The Villa End

Watch this film taken from the away section at the Etihad last week of Manchester City’s third (and title winning) goal. The celebrations are great to see from this end:

Those celebrations hey? Genuine, powerful, raw… it matters!

Congratulations Manchester City!

Every time City win a trophy in dramatic fashion I always think ’ah, well we’ll never experience anything like that again. Next time it’ll feel different’ but then they go and do something like today. As time goes by we’ll start to think of this as an incredible way to win the title. For now its more of a ’phew!’

Congratulations City. Great achievement and it’s been an incredible season. To win the Premier League you have to be the best, most consistent team that season. Cup competitions are important and it’s great winning them but ultimately winning the League – especially one that we are often told is the greatest in the League – is the mark of a truly great team. Brilliant work City.

Let’s not forget it’s 4 titles in 5 seasons too!

Years ago the great City coach Malcolm Allison told me that ‘it’s important to celebrate each success as if it’s your first because it could be your last.’ Let’s keep celebrating Blues. Never take anything for granted.