Manchester City vs. Feyenoord, 2017 Champions League: Final Score 1-0, City stay perfect with late Sterling winner

For the first 88 minutes, it was a very frustrating night in front of goal in their Champions League match against Feyenoord, but the Blues never stopped attacking and finally found a winner thanks to a beautiful goal from Raheem Sterling. City remain perfect in their European campaign with five wins in five, and they’ve now won Group F with a game to spare.

FIRST HALF

It has been a while since we’ve seen a boring Manchester City match under Pep Guardiola, but that’s what we got in the first half. The Blues were passing the ball well from the back as they usually do, but there were problems finding spaces in the final third. Feyenoord did well to defend deep inside their half, but City lacked creativity to come up with good scoring chances.

Defensively, Ederson Moraes was strangely shaky at times, failing to control some easy passes and taking too much time with the ball. The Brazilian nearly gave away two penalties in the first half, but ultimately the Blues did well without the ball.

At halftime, a really uneventful first half had a deserving 0-0 draw. Hopefully things would improve in the final period.

SECOND HALF

City were much, much better in the second half, with more pace to their passing and better movement off the ball. More shots were taken and the Feyenoord keeper had to work a lot harder, and we finally saw the City team we’re used to seeing. Unfortunately the Blues missed a number of very, very good chances and the final few minutes of the game would be wide open.

Pep called Gabriel Jesus and the debutant Phil Foden off the bench to try and get City a goal, and although the two weren’t directly involved in the game-winner, they took part in the celebration: Raheem Sterling, who was the best player on the pitch all night, made a gorgeous one-two with Ilkay Gundogan and calmly chipped the keeper to give City the lead and the win.

A draw would have been incredibly unfair, and even the 1-0 doesn’t do City justice. Despite all the changes, the team played amazing football and completely deserve the victory. This team is good, y’all.

Man City: Ederson; Walker, Otamendi, Mangala, Danilo; De Bruyne (Gabriel Jesus), Touré (Foden), Gundogan; Bernardo, Agüero, Sterling (Brahim)

Goals: Sterling (88’)

Feyenoord: Jones; Diks (Nieuwkoop), Tapia, van Beek, Haps; Amrabat, Toornstra, Vilhena; Berghuis (Basaçikoglu), Boëtius (Jorgensen), Larsson

Goals: None