I think most (all?) of us would probably have been pretty happy with a draw and a decent performance before the game. The win against Southampton had taken the pressure off and made this game less crucial to pick up all three points in. Either way we were close to fourth - had we not won, we'd have been four points off, which even with just 11 games to go, is hardly a season-ending gap at all, especially seeing as we have to play both Arsenal and Man United in the remaining games (and both of them look like they could slip up at any point in any game).
Yet it was testament to our performance that had we not got the second goal we'd probably have been a bit disappointed afterwards that we didn't get all three points. We didn't really look like we were in trouble for most of the game; as you mentioned Yorky, City got out the blocks quicker and looked decent early on but they were always going to have little spells where they pushed us back. I always thought we would hurt them when we got possession - for me, the result would be down to whether we took our chances and whether we could stop them pushing us back for long periods (where we struggle more).
There is a reason we perform well against City under Rodgers - they're very poor at controlling space at times and they force themselves into poor trade offs because of their indiscipline in midfield. Toure is appalling at tracking back and he always leaves his midfield partner with a lot of space to cover, hence they will often briefly swap sides depending on where the opponent attacked on a particular counter (with the deepest midfielder being the one who has to cover). One of Pellegrini's main jobs when he came in should have been to find a better balance and structure than Mancini did to make them more solid between the lines and on defensive transitions and he hasn't really done that well enough. They play a more aggressive defensive line now, I guess partly to cope with that, but that gives them other problems. As such, a team that can take the game to them will often get their reward for doing so and we did this very well.
Rodgers got the team spot on - we needed energy and the ability to use the huge spaces behind their midfield and we had this in abundance. It hardly needs saying again how good Coutinho was but Moreno and Sterling with his movement (though he looked a bit over-focused on the ball, if that makes any sense at all
) backed him up well to cause Zabaleta and Kompany lots of problems on that left hand side. Watching the first half again we could have been even more aggressive on that side in terms of running at Zabaleta but either way we were creating dangerous situations on that side and both of our goals did end up coming from there.
Towards the end of the first half we were looking a bit too open between the lines - obviously their goal came from Silva getting into that space and he was playing more narrow as the half went on. Dzeko was pulling over to the left more but it was hardly like he was playing LW so while they were a bit unstable at defending their left flank, they were overloading us behind our midfield. We needed to tighten up in that area.
And that was one of the things I was so impressed with in the second half - Allen and Henderson both had excellent games but particularly in the second half, they denied City space well in front of our defence which freed up our attack further. It's not easy to cover those spaces in there - it wasn't just a matter of sitting deep and shifting across; quite often it was one covering the other when the other had to break the line to close down Toure or Fernandinho in midfield. That requires good intelligence and a lot of hard work but both of them, especially Allen, were very good in that regards. It also forced City to have to attack the channels more and more, which, with a back five, was easier for us to cover.
It really was unreal how easy it was to play through the City lines - while this isn't an inherent weakness of 4-4-2 necessarily, when it's played badly and without compactness, you can take advantage of it through the middle and we constantly had 4v2 or 4v3 situations in midfield. Even when didn't have this numerical superiority, we had positional superiority because our two no.10s were still finding space behind their midfield. Lovren played two or three good passes through the lines and there was always the sense that we had control of that area. Pellegrini's decision to bring on Milner helped them a bit but it still didn't really deal with the problem - their two CMs were still leaving huge spaces behind them. It really highlights another benefit of the change in shape Rodgers made - there are many teams in England who are just not good at all at shutting off space and being compact from front to back and playing two no.10s in those little channels, backed up by Henderson moving forward and Sterling dropping off can cause so many problems for teams, not least a team who is as structurally open as City are.
The work rate overall was superb. There wasn't a single player who didn't contribute anything - Sterling despite not being at his best was still a nuisance for their defenders, Markovic was still quietly solid despite not having that much influence on the game. Lovren had his best game in a red shirt, especially in the second half where I thought he played very well. To see that intensity in our game was genuinely wonderful because for too much of this season we didn't have that. Even since the change to 3-4-3, there have been games where we haven't come near having that same intensity in our game (as Rodgers might phrase it) as we did last season but we did on Sunday and even on a bad day, that is a hard-working, energetic lineup of players. City looked very slow and cumbersome compared to us and I thought that was great to see. Rodgers is very good at setting a team up to be aggressive and quick and we've always looked at our best under him when we play like that. Some people love the individual flair players and I like that too but personally I also really love to watch a team press and close down together (or at least in fours and fives). There's just a certain aesthetic appeal about watching a group of players in harmony closing down the opposition, hunting the ball the ball together and suffocating opponents high up the pitch. It brings you back to our great run last season when we did exactly that, game after game. It was good to see elements of that on Sunday.
Onwards and upwards.
