City Win on Penalties

Manchester City won on penalties 7-6 with the last shot going to Joe Hart.

A nice note on an otherwise heavily frustrating game.

City dominating the first half entered the second half having a goal on LA and holding possession 60% of the time. 

This however diminished very quickly.

Shaun Wright Phillips replaced David Silva and Kolarov came in for Clichy at halftime.

The change with City's mentality could easily be felt. 

At the 53rd minute a wonderful strike by Galaxy's Mike Magee went over Joe Hart and into the netting. Immediately after kickoff another chance came for Galaxy with a breakdown in the defense which allowed Galaxy to do a bit of nice passing and get off two separate shots on the goal, both however were shutdown by Hart and the defense. 

In the 61st minute Savic came on to relieve Kompany for he was experiencing difficulties with his knee, he was shown on the sidelines later with an ice packet over his knee. 

It seemed the entire game; including the first half, that City was playing a me first mentality. 

The passes and first touches got rougher and rougher as the game went on and it seemed that City we're being intimidated to the point where they could not advance forward. There was a bright spot later in the game around the 80th minute which SWP lobbed a beautiful ball to Dzeko and due to his positioning was not able to knock it in. 

Something that irked me was how Silva did not pass the ball to Dzeko not even once in an opportune area. Prior to the play in which Balotelli attempted a fancy shot on goal, Silva had passed the ball to Balotelli when in fact Dzeko was in a much more advantageous position. 

Now I understand I have a bit of bias, however it seemed as if there was zero effort to bring Dzeko into the game. At one point in the game, I believe it was SWP, attempted a shot on goal or so it seemed at first but then it turned into an extremely sloppy pass that Dzeko was not expecting at all and could not pounce on the opportunity. The only good chance he had on goal was the lob from SWP late in the game. 

If Mancini doesn't want to waste 100k a week in wages he better find a way to utilize Dzeko. I saw flashes of Silva last season where he would play a two faced game during this game and I don't like it. 

The team played much better in my opinion in the previous two games against Vancouver and Club America. Both those games Yaya was playing Silva's position. 

Overall I think this game was extremely frustrating however I tend to be more optimistic and there were plenty of positives.

SWP was not as impressive today but showed a good amount of effort which could mean he is back in the City fold, Savic had a couple of mistakes however he also had an average game which is nice, the more he plays the more he seems like a solid pickup, and Hart was looking very good apart from the one goal in which he could do nothing about, not to mention he took the last shot on penalties which won us this friendly and completed a sweep of the North American tour.

Now to look forward to the Irish XI!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Cheers!