Manchester City 3 - West Bromwich Albion 0

Date: Saturday 21st March 2015 
Competition: Barclays Premier League
Man City:
6.1
WBA:
5.0
Myhill 7.7, Dawson 5.3, McAuley 4.6, Olsson 4.2, Lescott 5.8, Baird 4.6, Morrison 6.3, Gardner 5.3, Fletcher 6.2, Sessegnon 5.3 (Mulumbu, 89 4.9), Berahino 5.7 (Anichebe, 86 4.2)
Unused subs: Rose, Wisdom, Davidson, Pocognoli, Nabi
Sent off: McAuley (2, Foul)
Manager: Tony Pulis 4.8
Referee: Neil Swarbrick (Lancashire) 1.7
Attendance: 45,018   Home Fans 3.2   Away Fans 6.5

oshawabaggie:

Firstly, hats off to the travelling fans who submitted themselves to what was always likely to be a painful afternoon. Difficult as this was going to be, it was ruined as a contest in the second minute by a refereeing cock up in more than one sense. Was it a foul? Yes. Was it a sending off? I say no. How can you allow the advantage to the fouled player, presumably because you think he can still score, and then say that the foul denied a scoring opportunity? To compound the farce, the ref then sends off the wrong player, who in a final twist was the one who made the bad pass which lead to the foul. This whole episode is just another argument for video review for game changing events.

When I saw the defensive lineup I expected a siege and that was just reinforced after the sending off. The positives? Mozza and Myhill and the fact that we didn't suffer more than three goals. You couldn't fault the overall effort and fight to the end, but as an attacking threat there was nothing to offer.

On to QPR, where a win will almost take us to safety.

Kev Buckley:

Oh come on: this one was never going to be a "contest". Despite City's showing against bottom-three Burnley, Tony Pulis away from home was never likely to emulate the tactical thinking of Sean Dyche at home.

Does anyone really think that the game plan was changed at all because of the sending-off?

We started out with Saido up front on his own, chasing lost causes supplied to him by a nine behind a ball that City would be allowed to monopolise, and all that happened after the sending off was that Berahino had to drop a little deeper to make sure we still had nine behind the ball at times

As it was, two sets of unlucky bounces in the box saw us two down - so would having a fourth centre-back on the pitch and not being forced to deploy Baird at left full-back, really have changed our luck in those situations?

The first goal saw two or three unlucky ricochets before Gardner's attempt to get something on a ball still boucing around in our box presented a chance to a striker then yet to score his first goal for his club.

Similarly, even without the loss of his right-sided central centre-back partner, Olson would still have been on the left of Pulis's two central centre-backs and so in the same place to make a complete horlicks of his attempted clearence to serve up an opportunity for the second.

As we've often seen at the Albion, when playing this way under past managers, if you are prepared to drop deep and keep clearing the ball from in and around your box, you are going to get the unlucky bounces from time to time, whilst at other times you'll hold out.

It's all part of a plan that Albion fans have often been happy with, so I am sure everyone will get over it pretty qucikly.

As to the way the referee handled the second minute incident, other than choosiing the wrong centre-back out of the four he had to choose from (perhaps there's a case to be made for changing our squad numbers so that 23 and 25 are not likely to be in the same area of the pitch all that often - then again, when everyone's in your box, would it really matter) he did everything he could to not allow the original foul to lessen the chance of a goal being scored.

The original opportunity has gone because the foul takes out the player on the ball and sees the ball move off in another direction, so no longer under the control of the fouled player who's been clattered to the ground.

There's immediately a different goal-scoring opportunity, to the one that the fouled player was thought to be part of, involving a different player.

Rather than halt play and let the defence get back behind the ball en-masse at the set piece, thereby giving an advantge to the side deploying four centre-backs with which to cope at set pieces, the ref lets play go on, however another one of their four centre-backs makes a legitimate challenge, so there is no advantage gained from playing on - games stops, restaring at the location of what would have been the original set piece.

As it was, even after losing one of our four centre backs, the Albion didn't immediately concede from the resultant set piece so a goal wasn't scored from what had been considered, by the referee, a goal-scoring opportunity.