Manchester City 4 Borussia Moenchengladbach 2
Perhaps fortune is changing for Manchester City in the Champions League. They were 2-1 down after 78 minutes and, with Sevilla leading Juventus, a golden chance to win Group D was slipping away.
But cometh the hour, cometh Raheem Sterling, who intervened with two strikes that may prove priceless. The first came from close range, the second a dipping finish. They gave City the lead, Sterling a 21st birthday to remember and moments later Wilfried Bony poked home to make it three goals in five stunning minutes and the best chance of a favourable last-16 draw.
From the 2-0 shellacking Stoke gave City on Saturday Pellegrini made four changes. Out went Martín Demichelis, Bacary Sagna, Fernando, who is injured, and Bony. In came Eliaquim Mangala, Gaël Clichy, Yaya Touré and Fabian Delph. It meant the manager fielded Sterling as a de facto No9 and that Bony had been given a snub that involved a wide forward by trade being preferred to his prowess as a time-served striker.
The state of the group demanded that City went for the victory and hoped events in Andalusia went their way. Yet in the opening exchanges it was André Schubert’s men who came closer to landing the first blow. Mangala was dispossessed and Julian Korb was released along the right. The No27 had clear sight of Joe Hart’s goal but he blasted the ball over the bar.
It suggested that the defensive maladies that plague any City XI Pellegrini fields without Vincent Kompany might do so again. The captain was absent once more due to his latest calf problem and by the 19th minute City had indeed been punished, via a Korb goal that cancelled out David Silva’s earlier one.
City had enjoyed their advantage for too little time and it was a pity their rear-guard was so slipshod as the Spaniard’s second goal of the campaign was a beauty. Sterling illustrated the kind of magic he can conjure by zipping a back-heel through traffic to the on-running Silva. He strode forward and banged the ball beyond Yann Sommer. This had Pellegrini instantly off his seat to punch the air in celebration. It had the three-quarter full Etihad in rapture (minus the travelling contingent, of course). But, disappointingly, the mood lasted around only 180 seconds.
Fabian Johnson motored along theleft, knifing through the City resistance, before he sprayed the ball into the area where it bounced up sweetly for Korb to leave Hart little chance of making the save.
In this move and execution Schubert’s side showed why they had handed Bayern Munich a rare defeat at the weekend, a 3-1 triumph that was the first defeat for Pep Guardiola’s team this term in the Bundesliga.
As Stoke had done at the Britannia Stadium, Mönchengladbach were finding holes easy to locate and their attractive pass-and-move stuff was far fleeter than City’s ability to repel it. Johnson seemed able to rove down Clichy’s right corridor at will, and even from a dead ball Pellegrini’s side could be amateurish.
Raffael, one of the visiting strikers, took a free-kick into the area that Fernandinho could head only straight up in the air and when Nicolás Otamendi tried to show his team-mate how to do it the defender missed the clearance.
If City were relieved to see this threat fizzle out, three minutes before the break the sinking feeling that haunted them at Stoke returned. This was too simple for Mönchengladbach as they cut the home defence to ribbons, the ball pin-balling from Oscar Wendt to Johnson and then Raffael, who was given too much time by Aleksandar Kolarov and that was 2-1 and Pellegrini had serious talking to do when he strode off for the interval moments later.
As the second half began Juventus were holding Sevilla 0-0, which meant that if the scoreline remained the same at 90 minutes not even a victory would not allow City to overtake the Italians.
So the ask of Pellegrini’s weary-looking bunch was now greater than it had been at kick-off: they had to turn the deficit into a winning result, and hope Sevilla could somehow defeat Juventus.
City began, as they should have, with the intent to get at the Germans and quickly find the equaliser. Kolarov had a shot he failed to direct, and moments later the left-back went down in the Mönchengladbach area but Danny Makkelie, the referee, was in no mood to award the penalty.
An anxious home crowd hoped Silva might turn the contest their way. When a Mönchengladbach attack broke down the ball came to the 29-year-old. He swivelled near half-way, saw Sterling skipping down the centre, and attempted to thread a pass into him, but to the City support’s frustration it hit a defender.
Fernandinho stood up a ball to far post and when Nico Elvedi tried to chest this to the safety of Sommer’s hands Sterling came close to picking the goalkeeper’s pocket.
Sterling – twice – might have beat Sommer but he could not find direction and by 65 minutes Jesús Navas, for Kevin De Bruyne, and Bony, for Delph, had been thrown on by their manager.
Fernando Llorente gave Sevilla a 1-0 lead with 25 minutes remaining, and a finish theywill remember for a long time here was about to occur.
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