Chelsea Vs Man City: During Pep Guardiola time as Manchester City Manager he always had a thing about Chelsea.
When Catalan was in charge at Barcelona, he had a few famous rumbles with them in the Champions league.
However, since he arrived at the Etihad, he has been a warier of the west London Club than ever.
Under Antonio Conte’s squad assembly, there were good reasons too that was said by the Guardiola’s warnings while renewing his rivalry with Jose Mourinho has made everyone who’s talking up proved prescient long before season gets over, while Maurizio Sarri inflicted City’s first league of last season defeat and extremely ran them closely in the Carabao Cup final.
The victory of Chelsea over city this week offers some evidences that Guardiola’s praise for Frank Lampard should never be disregarded as easy platitudes. The ex midfielder is new to coaching among the top flight but this was an impressive win-win that has built on their defeat at the Etihad.
Chelsea averagely got 60% possession in their league this season, they have been more aggressive when they had lost their first meeting of that season but at Stamford Bridge they got happier to play on the counter. These included over 50% possession in the league this season in the first game against City, including their lowest before Thursday night 49, yet we’re content with 34% in their 2-1 win.
It wasn’t smash-and-grab either, with the Blues battering the dethroned champions in terms of the quality of their created chances.
How Chelsea weathered the storms felt significant, especially made us to believe that the City pressure was overwhelmed uncountable teams before.
Visitors started both halves on Thursday but their possessions were declined in the minutes leading to each of the goals as the discipline were rewarded to the home team.
Alongside with Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner both improving what has been already an impressive team, there are significant signs of potential challenger for City and Liverpool in next season; at the very least they should exhibit stiffer competition.
From all that has happened, Guardiola has seen the need to take precautions. Lampard has been City’s serial winner in one of the games but have learned alot from it and will work seriously to ensure it doesn’t happen often.
“This is the reality of Premier League- City’s Boss said after the defeat.
“Every season it is tougher and we’re going to think about what we have to do to improve the team”
While City and Liverpool remains the two teams battling it out for victory for next season as this is everyone’s expecting, Guardiola would never permit Chelsea to slip too far from his mind