This was the day when Manchester City’s walking wounded crashed into the wall and were buried alive under a beautiful assortment of black and red bricks. Pain? Pep Guardiola cannot have had many afternoons like this.
They arrived battered and bruised and left broken, stripped into tiny pieces by a side more used than anyone to what normally happens when you’re messing around in the garden with the biggest child.
Who could have ever predicted that Bournemouth, Guardiola’s most compliant punching bag, would be the team to end his 32-match unbeaten run in the Premier League? In fourteen previous meetings in the top flight, City had won the draw. They even beat them up and gave the sharpest lectures on how these food chains work.
And then this act of brutal and beautiful reversal occurred, with the shocking result that City surrendered the top of the table to Liverpool just three days after exiting the Carabao Cup.
They will of course still talk about injuries because they have plenty of them and Guardiola has not been shy about mentioning that. Listening to him over the past few days led you to believe that a Red Cross parachute drop was necessary, although that also begs the question of how many small violins can fit in one standard case.
Antoine Semenyo put Bournemouth ahead on a history-making day on the south coast
Manchester City failed to topple their opponents and continue at the top of the table
Bournemouth had never beaten City in the history of their time in the Premier League
To illustrate what we might mean there, take a look at the names on their team sheet. Of City’s starting XI, seven had played in the victorious Champions League final 16 months earlier and an eighth, Mateo Kovacic, had won the tournament several times elsewhere.
They may have had bumps, aches, and guys playing awkwardly, but these weren’t kids who had been cut from the youth team. No, Guardiola had stars at his disposal, whether they were in optimal condition or not, and those players were kicked because Bournemouth were better.
They were more intense, more organized, more committed and more perceptive. They created more, they took more, they blocked more, they tackled harder. Nothing was handed out, everything was confiscated.
The best of them, Antoine Semenyo, scored one and played a role in the second, finished by Evanilson, but he also tore Kyle Walker to shreds. He made him look old, both before and after Josko Gvardiol reduced the score to 2-1 late on. Walker’s beating was prolonged.
Again, some of that will come down to fitness – Walker was brought in for a first start within a month out of necessity. But he was crushed in that match. Just as Erling Haaland was forgotten and Bernardo Silva was forced into extremely rare mistakes.
And that requires a lot of praise for Andoni Iraola, the orchestrator of a wonderful feat.
Iraola had complained in these pages earlier this week that when his side finished 6-1 at the Etihad last season, they lacked ambition. They sat back and were pelted by the storm.
On this occasion they attacked City, suffocating the spaces and going in hard. Within two minutes they had forced a double save from Ederson, with the first stop from Semenyo being quite difficult and the second from Justin Kluivert considerably more difficult. The pressure did not ease.
Evanilson doubled the Cherries’ lead in the second half as Andoni Iraola’s side held on
Semenyo was a shining spark for the hosts who made their breakthrough inside 10 minutes
Iraola’s men have risen to eighth place in the Premier League after a strong performance
By the time of the goal, Phil Foden, Mateo Kovacic, Ederson and even Silva had fallen into minor fouls, and then the breakthrough came with nine on the clock. Milos Kerkez was the catalyst, beating Foden from a standstill on the left wing, before cutting back to Semenyo, who stopped the ball on the edge of the six-yard box with his back to goal. Gvardiol allowed the turn a little too easily, but it was a quality turn and finish from an excellent striker who won’t go under the radar for long.
For Guardiola, the related concern will be the regularity of these early goals – this was the fifth time in all competitions that his side have conceded a goal inside ten minutes. The other concern will be how his side struggled to play through an aggressive press, having only managed to create a decent chance after half an hour when Foden was blocked by Kerkez. City simply had no grip on midfield.
When they had some time with the ball, they could not release Haaland from Illia Zabarnyi and Marcos Senesi. His involvement was non-existent, apart from the fact that he drilled a shot wide and rolled his own ankle in the process. He limped through the rest of the half, during which City had no shots on target.
The second period started in a similar fashion to the first, with Ederson straining to block Evanilson in a one-on-one that had arisen after Semenyo had flayed Walker for the umpteenth time.
Josko Gvardiol pulled one back for the visitors, but Man City were unable to win again
Pep Guardiola cut a disappointed figure as he watched his team fail to find an equalizer
There were worrying scenes for City’s injury-hit squad as Haaland went down injured
It set a brutal pattern for the half and continued in the 63rd minute, when Semenyo spotted space behind Walker and exposed him with a clever ball to Kerkez, who came in from the wing-back’s blind side. Kerkez’s subsequent cross was perfect, as was the timing of Evanilson’s lunge and finish in the middle.
Marcus Tavernier almost added to the humiliation but blasted a shot against the post, and there was a feeling it could prove costly when Gvardiol headed in from Ilkay Gundogan’s cross. It was City’s first shot on target and sparked a frenzy in the final ten minutes. Doku and Gvardiol had chances and Haaland saw a header shot off the line by Mark Travers. The rebound was then pinned off the post.
On another day it might have been a story about City’s spirit in the face of adversity. Instead, it was about those stones falling terribly hard.
