BURNLEY 1, MANCHESTER CITY 1
Manchester City’s recent inability to put opponents to the sword quickly and early finally came back to bite them after Burnley chose to be brave and tried to attack their visitors during their visit to a wintry Turf Moor and were rewarded for their efforts.
Raheem Sterling may have complained about recent tackling before this game but the Burnley players didn’t give the referee much cause for concern with their tough tackling as they played a part in cancelling out Danilo’s early goal with a late equaliser by Johann Berg Gudmundsson to earn themselves a point against the league leaders.
The point allowed City to go 16 points ahead of nearest rivals Manchester United ahead of their game against Huddersfield Town.
Pep Guardiola named only six substitutes for the game at Turf Moor, citing injuries to Leroy Sane, Gabriel Jesus, David Silva, Phil Foden, Fabian Delph, Benjamin Mendy and John Stones.
It was clearly a message to the FA after Guardiola had repeatedly called on referees to protect players from dangerous foul challenges which had been responsible for ruling out several of City’s talented squad.
City’s squad strength was being stretched to the limit and the bench at Burnley was populated by Laporte, who played the full game in his debut in City’s 2-0 win over West Brom on Wednesday, alongside Yaya Toure and goalkeeper Claudio Bravo.
They were joined by youngsters Tosin Adarabioyo, Brahim Diaz and midfielder Oleksandr Zinchenko – who had played at left back in the West Brom game.
The final slot was due to be taken up by EDS striker Lukas Nmecha, who Guardiola had declared would be promoted to the first team squad after the West Brom game, but he was declared unfit to play while the rest of the EDS team had played in a 1-0 home defeat to Swansea’s U23 team only the night before.
City had clearly prepared for a physical game against Burnley by naming their toughest available defensive line with Danilo and Vincent Kompany joining Nicolas Otamendi and Kyle Walker in the back four while Oleksandr Zinchenko and club record signing Aymeric Laporte dropped down to the bench.
Ilkay Gündoğan replaced the injured David Silva in midfield and City while City found Burnley in the mood to fight fire with fire it looked for all intents and purposes as though they would come out victorious after a sumptuous first half strike by Danilo from outside the box curled past a diving Nick Pope after Bernardo Silva’s nonchalant square pass found the Brazilian in plenty of space.
Just 22 minutes gone and City should really have been 4-0 up by the time Raheem Sterling missed an absolute sitter of the kind that City boss Guardiola had been warning about in his earlier press conferences for a while now.
Chances for Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, Sterling, and Danilo came and went as the quality chances went unfinished and City went down blind alleys.
Burnley’s new signing Aaron Lennon delivered a clear warning of the consequences of not finishing off the Clarets as his shot was tipped onto the woodwork by Ederson after Jack Cork found him during an increasingly tense second half.
The game changing moment came when Sterling then missed an absolute sitter into an open goal from three yards out after a square ball from Kyle Walker carved open the Burnley defence with under 20 minutes to go – the England winger inexplicably sent the ball wide of the open goal.
Diaz quickly replaced the out-of-sorts winger but the Burnley players had clearly believed that luck with with them and upped their game against their flagging opponents in the final minutes.
A deep cross in by Matthew Lowton found Gudmundsson running into space after he had caught Walker napping and he beat Ederson with a half volley to score the equaliser with eight minutes.