Terrace Talk - Man City: Bernardo Silva gives the antidote to Tuchel's kryptonite

Chelsea were being made to look mighty ordinary. In the context of a single game, it would of course be tempting to reopen the hyperbole factory

Sun, 26 Sep, 2021 - 17:29

Simon Curtis

Strident football opinions are 10-a-penny these days, as easy to stumble into as embarrassing Boris Johnson quotes, and equally quick to decompose.

Twenty minutes into this Ronaldo-decorated season, Manchester United, we were reliably informed, were the Real Deal again.

We were not to forget Liverpool, of course, with Virgil van Dijk’s assured return making them nailed-on champs in week two.

Then Chelsea heaved their embossed chequebook into the forum, and the arrival of a free-scoring Romelu Lukaku suddenly hoisted them to the summit of pundits’ fevered week-three attentions. It was all so confusing. Who were we supposed to apply our sensibly used and commercially viable bets on if they were all so damn good?

Before a depleted City (no strikers, look, they have no strikers!!) staggered into the Stamford Bridge precincts with only two 5-0 wins and two more six-goal efforts to their paltry season’s opening salvo, the excited chatter of Tommy Tuchel’s kryptonite factory had begun to circulate.

Situated in a bunker somewhere south of Slough, it had already equipped the wiry German professor with enough Guardiola-repelling substances to be this season’s telling factor.

A win here would crown him the first coach to nail four successive triumphs against the Catalan maestro, if indeed the anointers could fashion a crown to fit on Tuchel’s knobbly little head.

Eight defeats to Chelsea told their own story. They are Guardiola’s most successful opponents, we were told. Having dismantled City in the league and the FA Cup in the dying embers of last season, the German’s anti-Pep spray had worked again on the biggest stage of all, the Champions League final in May, rendering the City coach so incoherent he told all his holding midfielders to go upstairs to the bar and enjoy a glass of port. “You won’t be needed today!” he had shouted, his eyes glazed and smoke issuing from the back of his trousers.

Who could have guessed, then, with all these indisputable facts whizzing through the Stamford Bridge stratosphere, that the whole impenetrable fog could be cleared so efficiently simply by the whirring limbs of Bernardo Silva, himself built in the image of a young Iberian Tuchel, albeit more tanned, but equally frail and wiry and with a head of hair clearing almost as fast?

The diminutive Portuguese, almost siphoned off to Atletico Madrid in the summer, was a force of nature at the back, and an ever-present danger in the attack. If we had all come to witness the phenomenon that is N’Golo Kante, he could not be found, lost in the deceptively enormous shadow being thrown by the Portuguese’s seemingly feeble limbs.

As Bernardo chose to stand up to Antonio Rudiger’s constant bullying, we were treated to the sight of his tiny figure re-enacting for unsighted referee Michael Oliver the brutal pushing and shoving he had to endure at the hands of Chelsea’s most capable destroyer. Bernardo, apparently in possession of Pep’s new anti-kryptonite cream, was clearly in no mood to be pushed around.

And he was not alone.

City’s dismantling of the Chelsea fortress, brick by unhappy brick, was only kept from turning into a rout by their inability to finish the golden chances they manufactured almost at will. The tricky Jack Grealish, the recuperating Kevin de Bruyne, and the eventual matchwinner Gabriel Jesus all went agonisingly close as Guardiola cleared his eyes, shook off the curse, and strode into the bright capital light.

Rodri’s dominance as a midfield pivot, Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo’s reluctance to stop charging down the wings, and the dual rocks of Ruben Dias and Aymeric Laporte, ensured that City’s air of impregnability seldom wavered.

Chelsea, those would-be champions of weeks three and four, were being made to look mighty ordinary. In the context of a single game, it would of course be tempting to reopen the hyperbole factory and shower readers with news of the “this week’s undeniable next champions”. In the context of the weekend’s football, it quickly became even more tempting, with Ollie’s week-one champions lurching to stodgy defeat against Villa and Klopp’s eternal champions involved in a worryingly open skirmish at Brentford.

The confusion is real, but perhaps Guardiola himself gave us a clue. The words ‘Blue Fuel’ could be seen embossed on the top of his comfy leather seat. Maybe it is City, well stocked as they are with oily resources, that have the juice in their tank that will last through to next May, whilst others face empty forecourts and the prospect of running out of petrol halfway down the road.