Match Review: City vs. Fulham

Tonight has only one down sight for me, Edin Dzeko. The Bosnian forward yet again continuing to salvage points from important goals yet again for the side, but will probably be dropped on Wednesday nights game against Borussia Dortmund.



After an opening 10 minutes of constant passing through out the team in true City style, no major chance was created in a dull and bleak first half few minutes until a long ball was played out to the left hand side. John Arne Riise cut inside and soon went down under a challenge from Pablo Zabaleta. Many people will take their own opinion out of it regarding the contact, but their can be no question where the contact was made. Outside of the 18 yard box. Mladen Petric soon stepped up to slot the ball into the right hand side of the goal with Joe Hart going the opposite way.

A well organised Fulham side, done nothing but stay well organised and close down the play with perfection at many times and keeping Aguero, Silva and Tevez from scoring. Fulham's aim in the first half was to simply catch City on the counter and Hugo Rodallega was evidently City's biggest danger. After a spell of possession for Fulham, Rodallega picked up the ball before turning to force Vincent Kompany to take him down. The City skipper was given a caution for the incident.

A goal line scramble occurred before City finally took the lead. A shot from inform Carlos Tevez deflected into the path of David Silva, his shot was eventually parried by Fulham goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer where the ball was met by on running Sergio Aguero to equalize for the visitors. The first half drew to a close with City's best players being the front four with some exceptional link up play.

The second half kicked off with pretty much the same tone, City in control but ultimately doing nothing with it. The passing from the middle of the park and the front two were ever present today, and its quite possibly Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevez will dominate defences throughout this season. largely down to good link up play and the service and good organisation from the middle of the park.

Mancini made changes taking off Tevez for Balotelli, Barry for Nasri and Garcia for Dzeko. It was the latter of these changes that proved pivotal for the blues. A cross from the left by Gael Clichy was pumped into the box before a shallow header from Riise headed the ball into the path of Dzeko who had to wrestled Brede Hangeland before turning and smashing a ball into the top right hand corner of the Fulham net to give City the victory.

The game pretty much carried on in the same vain prior to the goal and with no surprise Mancini closed up shop and settled for the victory. City will now go into Wednesday night's game against Dortmund full of confidence along with a game against Sunderland in the league next weekend.
Man of the match for me was David Silva, who seemed to be involved in every area of play that had City going forward. Is he finally finding form of his post Christmas self last year? Who knows?