Manchester City 3-1 Newcastle: Final Whistle Thoughts

Manchester City are back to winning ways! The Blues dominated Newcastle on their way to a 3-1 win thanks to a Sergio Agüero hat-trick. It was a tough for a few minutes, but City got the job done and bounced back from the Liverpool loss with a strong performance.

Here’s our quick reaction to the game. Still to come: Match Report, Quotes and Tweets, 3 Things We Learned and Tactical Analysis.

• Oleksandr Zinchenko was EXCELLENT in this game. He’s clearly a better alternative to Danilo at left-back, because the Brazilian just doesn’t offer anything on his weaker foot. Zinchenko was intense and precise with the ball, and while he allowed Jacob Murphy to get in behind him for Newcastle’s goal, he was pretty good defensively for the rest of the game.
• There was clearly a lot of anxiety going on in the first few minutes. The team wanted to win so bad they forgot to the basics, like passing balls to their teammates. Once the first goal went in, though, we saw the City side we are used to.
• After a really, really, really bad performance at Liverpool, Sergio Agüero bounced back in style. I’m still not sure if he scored the first goal or not, but he scored a hat-trick anyway and had an overall strong night.
• Strangely poor night for Kevin De Bruyne. He did improve in the second half, but he was innacurate throughout and just couldn’t find the target with his shots and/or crosses. He probably scored, though, so he was still directly involved in one of the goals BECAUSE THIS IS KEVIN DE BRUYNE.
• Newcastle played like cowards for 70 minutes when they could have made the game a lot tougher by just playing football for a little bit, which they did after scoring. Did nobody watch the game at Anfield next week? Make things tough, lads!