Blackburn Rovers 2 Manchester City 2:WHEN THE men from Abu Dhabi bought Manchester City the talk was all about how the club would match Manchester United, and last night in one respect they did so. Salvaging games with last-minute goals has been a trick trademarked at Old Trafford while City have spent 30 years tossing results into the Ship Canal. Here in the last minute of stoppage-time and with bleak headlines and some uncomfortable statistics beckoning, City turned the game.
The headlines about City revolve around whom they might buy rather than whom they already possess. Yet for his €210 million Sheikh Mansour took possession of one of the finest array of young footballers the Premier League has seen since young men called Butt, Beckham, Neville and Giggs took the title to Old Trafford in 1996.
Under Sven-Goran Eriksson, when City were the plaything of a mere multimillionaire, Daniel Sturridge had been seen as one of the club's great young hopes, but as headlines spoke of Kaka, Gianluigi Buffon and Marcos Senna he was seen outside Eastlands as almost irrelevant. Now, with his side two down and with two minutes of regular time remaining, Sturridge clipped home a low cross and appeared to have given Mark Hughes some thin consolation for a wretched return to Ewood Park.
Then, in the last throes of stoppage-time, Sturridge held off his marker and delivered a pass through a mass of Blackburn defenders to finish at Robinho's feet. Early in the first half the Brazilian had shunned a net that must have seemed gapingly empty; this time he did not miss and Hughes sprinted down the touchline, his overcoat billowing behind him, embracing the chill air and the relief that another embarrassing defeat, to go with reverses at West Bromwich, Wigan and Bolton, had been averted.
The 19-year-old Sturridge has long been coveted by Chelsea and, because he is in the final year of his contract, he can begin negotiations with a new club next month. "I don't know how that happened," Hughes said. "If I had been there sooner I wouldn't have allowed it. That sort of thing puts a player in a position of power.
"I want to keep him because this is the best place for him. Good players need an environment that will allow them to match themselves against the best players in the world."
Given that Benni McCarthy and Jason Roberts have now scored five times in Sam Allardyce's three games in charge of Blackburn, the need to keep Roque Santa Cruz, who was in the stands to watch what everyone at Ewood assumes will be his future employers, is not obvious. Allardyce, having remarked that Sturridge had wiped the names of McCarthy and Roberts from the morning headlines, danced around Santa Cruz's future when asked directly. What he could do with €21 million is obvious; what the Paraguayan could do for Manchester City is less certain.
City had begun as if the 5-1 rout of Hull on St Stephen's Day had released all the tensions that had bunged up this club. They were neat, they were inventive and they looked as if they possessed the most expensive footballer the English Premier League has seen.
The beautiful interplay between McCarthy and Roberts that produced Blackburn's first was not the kind of move normally associated with an Allardyce side, although the second, which should have put the game completely out of City's reach, was - a free-kick was nodded on by Chris Samba's muscular header and finished off by Roberts. The final few, desperate minutes were anything but what Allardyce would have expected from footballers who play in his image.
