The dying puffs of firework smoke and a frigid fog made for a nebulous evening at the Etihad. There was a lack of clarity in the atmosphere. There is a lack of clarity about Manchester City’s purpose in the Champions League.
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City has won five matches in three seasons in this competition, and again looks set to depart at the group stage with the minnows. The Champions League was supposed to herald the next stage of City's developement into a super club. It is a long, long way off that.
The late sending off of Yaya Toure was accompanied by the sound of hundreds of plastic blue seats thwacking upwards as the City supporters began to trudge out with eight minutes still to play of their must-win match against CSKA Moscow.
Toure flung Georgi Milanov to the ground with a powerful shove to the face in a moment which encapsulated the frustration felt by the English champions on the field and those chilly souls in the stands. They had had enough. They turned suspicious.
“UEFA is bent,” the dwindling crowd spat. You could tell the players felt victimized too. The object of their ire, of course, was referee Tasos Sidiropoulos. He decided to send off Toure as well as Fernandinho, who got away with no fouls here in contrast with the eight he made in the World Cup quarterfinal against Colombia without rebuke.
The Greek also neglected to give Sergio Aguero the penalties he desperately craved late on.
But worse, he failed to dismiss CSKA’s Pontus Wernbloom prior to Toure's red card. Wernbloom had clearly tugged Sergio Aguero back and, on a booking, looked set to walk. The referee instead showed Sergei Ignashevich the yellow card and Wernbloom escaped.
Following the games against Barcelona last season, the Citizens have had conspiratorial thoughts in their heads. They turned that way again. But to single out the referee as the chief culprit for this loss, which leaves City staring down the barrel, would be a red herring. This was a mess entirely of City’s own making.
For a team that has complained so zealously about UEFA’s seeding process and how it disadvantages them, this was a ringing endorsement for the status quo. Manchester City is the highest-paid sports team in the world. It has owners with limitless pots of cash. It is, simply put, the richest team in the richest league in football. City was reduced to decrying the referee and that best sums up its current ineptitude.
The manager Manuel Pellegrini, to his credit, refused to "link the referee to the result" in his post-match press conference but the manner in which the players, led by Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta and Samir Nasri, rushed the officials after the Ignashevich incident as well as the final whistle demonstrated acutely where the blame was assumed to lie.
"I don't want to analyze the referee's decisions. It's more important for me to analyse why we are not playing the way we always play," said Pellegrini.
Kompany, meanwhile, would have been better advised to sprint to the dressing room and ask Fernandinho and Toure just what in the hell they were thinking. A word for Nasri, who escaped admonishment for a blatant kick on Milanov, would not have gone astray either.
The rank indiscipline in City’s ranks stemmed solely from frustration with their own performance. From top to bottom, this was a pointless display from them. Pellegrini made no changes to the side which only just beat 10-man Manchester United in the derby and expected it to be enough.
But Bibras Natcho, Roman Eremenko Jr. and Alan Dzagoev were supreme in the midfield against a cumbersome duo of Fernando and Toure. Either the Ivorian can’t play in a two or else he won’t. He wasn’t so hot in marking his compatriot Seydou Doumbia for the opening goal either. Both fullbacks erred on the goals.
"Of course we must find out what happened to this team," Pellegrini said. "I don't understand why they can't play in the Champions League. We must review a lot of things, try to understand why we played such a low performance."
They have another opportunity to make amends for this disaster but it’s against, arguably, the best club side on the planet in the shape of Bayern Munich.
"When you have the mathematical option to qualify, you must try for it it," said Pellegrini of City's glimmer of hope. "It's more difficult but not impossible."
Even then they must hope for the result of CSKA’s match against Roma to go in their favor. Either Pellegrini is incapable of picking a decent team for this competition or else his players are not as good as they’ve been made out to be. Or both. City is hoping for miracles; the one thing Abu Dhabi’s riches can’t buy.
