Hate to say it but a better striker would have scored at least 1 of the 3 Eddie had.

Duh. Eddie demonstrating how not to score. Not his night.

As others have said, doesn’t help when the left back isn’t.

And given that, he needs to take chances like the two headers he's missed tongiht.

Personally I would have played Tierney at LB and moved Zinchenko into the middle of the park.

We wondered whether your midfield or striking deficiencies would catch up with us first. Clearly the answer is 'both'.

But when Trossard comes on for his cameos he looks far more involved and dangerous. So it’s not all about the left back.

Tierney is more direct, and more attacking.

Arteta needs to have a long hard think about that.

But for me, Martinelli less culpable than the back 4 and Eddie for tonight’s loss.

And Charlie Patino has been sent off tonight as well.

I can see things rapidly unravelling from here. Expect teams to foul with impunity and use the low block with lots of draws in between. We can call them cheats etc but the inexperience in our side showed.

True

And dropped Jorginho ? He’s done very well

I thought zinny played very childishly in the ball today. Like he was out to prove a point to former teammates

True. It was mistakes from the back 4 and Eddie that did for us. Martinelli was more a case of the game passing him by.

Still in our hands.

But I suspect the pendulum has swung, and our young team lacks the inexperience to mentally deal with this.

City too streetwise in that second half, every trick in the book, broke the game up, slowed it down, made it niggly and we lost fluidity and concentration and gave them the game.

Frustrating because they were there for the taking after that first half.

Don’t think pep got it right tonight with Bernardo at left back but he can afford to bumble through it because of the ridiculous quality he has all over his squad

Zinchenko was indeed trying too hard. Trying to be too clever. Against a team that knows his style very well.

Oh, absolutely, I am in no way putting any of the blame on Martinelli's shoulders tonight. He did very little but Gabriel, Saliba, Tomiyasu and Zinny (when he was actually at LB) were utter shite, panicky *%^@ yer pants shite.

In summary, we lost that game through our own mistakes.

City were more professional, but not better.

City are not the side they were but we gifted them goals through ridiculously poor defending and did not take any of the chances we made, which in truth were very takeable.

No striker. No composure. No title.

Important player injured last minute
Already missing main striker long term
Big chances missed
2 big mistakes gifting goals
Big deflection to get the game changing 2nd goal

City just suffocated the game 2nd half. They know how to grind a win, play badly and still just turn it on to win.

We still have to work so hard for our goals, to be fair we’ve been relatively error free for us this year.

Didn’t quite have enough but it felt like for us to win everything had to be perfect for us

I thought we moved the ball through midfield very well in the second half, and we looked very dangerous down the right as usual ...but it just somehow tended to get bogged down when it went down our left, which seemed to be a lot. Xhaka, Martinelli and Zini off the boil.

Yep. Eddie is middle shelf. A top drawer striker might have made the difference for us tonight .

For me..

Tierney back in the side

White back in.

Take gabby out the side for trossard for a bit.

Keep Partey fit ffs

Win our game in hand and we are back top game at villa is now critical

Thought we were magnificent the first half, highlighted by the fact “ best team in Europes” keeper was booked for time wasting in the 30th minute.

We seemed to lose focus when the game got fractured early in the 2nd half. Still a lot to be positive about, a couple of good signings in the summer and we’re well in the mix.

I’m an eternal optimist, so here comes cliché time:

If you’d told me in September………………

Nothing on Jorginho in that game. Of course we’ll miss Partey’s physicality and athleticism but Jorginho was perfectly ok today. He played well

Too many unforced errors, too many missed chances.

Lots of possession, a tale of a shaky defence and an impotent attack.

True John ..... Bit of ce'st la vie for me .

I've always felt we've been punching above our weight .

Maybe we are just chucking a few away to create another knife edge 1989 finale

We’re a good side. Organised,coached, methodical however we haven’t got a killer in our side like Haaland and to win a title you need that. We struggle to kill these teams off and rarely see us taking half chances

Villa park could be a nightmare. Martinez & emery.

Some observations
Haaland is dirty Not physical He’s a dirty player
Grealish is a tosser A breath of wind in N4 and he goes down
And by the way he’s mastered the art of the dive penalty/foul perfected by Vardy Flick your leg out backwards and attract contact with the defender and go down
Got a jammy goal that Ramsdale would have saved but for the deflection and celebrated like it was the WC final You gobby little shite bag
Another little snidey player is Silva who fouled Saka with impunity until booked
I thought we played well and went toe to toe with City for long periods but shot ourselves in the foot with critical mistakes
I know Xhaka got criticized on here but he always showed and never hid
To beat these teams you pretty much have to be flawless and we weren’t
Saliba struggles against a physical forward MA needs a game plan to deal with this
A proper CF scores both those Nketiah headers
I hate City so much A shite outfit from top to bottom led by a rat who every one thinks walks on water but is a complete p…k
Now we are going to have all the experts creaming themselves about this great team led by a tactical genius…. F it we gifted them three goals and missed great chances

We are still in this and have to stand up and bark bollock and bite the next few games and keep the pace City will drop points
Next two games are critical AV early Sat they’ve had a week to prepare while we have lost a physical and emotional game less than three days before we play them We have to scratch out a win and then do the same away to Leicester
Stay in this ….change it a bit next few games and be like other teams play it tight be ruthless and nick some goals on the break
We have to believe
Ah man losing to this team hurts me so bad

Come on you Gunners Nows the time to stand up and be counted

We are a good side but just lately we've been all over the place defensively whilst at the same time losing our cutting edge.

The way we are playing at the moment means every single game we have left now looks a toughie.

The second City goal was coming based on the number of mistakes we were making at that time

It was and they were really really stupid mistakes, almost unfathomable at this level of the game.

The big shame is that City are not the team they once were and we let them off the hook.

Also I see City chuck in howlers in random games, usually v spurs (twice this season alone) but they rarely make a mistake against us. The best we can hope is they don’t play that well but even then we need to be perfect and we weren’t

Interesting thoughts on the possible second yellow for Ederson for the foul for the penalty? I think we’d have been lucky to get it, but if you imagine the same foul by a full back as a winger runs clear down the wing having nudged the ball past him it would be given a yellow a decent number of times.

I don’t think any ref is going to give a 2nd yellow to a GK in that situation. And to be fair I’d be very annoyed it Ramsdale got one for it as he didn’t really make an attempt at the challenge - still a foul though. Without the first yellow there’s a chance he gives it as it’s not controversial.

Pep had the lowest possession in any game he’s managed ever.

It’s strange that on the whole I think a lot of rival fans will be happy that we were beaten tonight, like they wanted us taken down. When Coty went toe to toe with Liverpool I wanted City to win it because Liverpool fans are so obnoxious. Maybe that’s what other fans feel about us. Spurs fans of course I get it, most of them take more joy in our downfall than their own ‘success’. But I bet Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool fans all wanted us beaten. Are City kind of irrelevant in people’s minds, they’re kind of not hated because it’s so sterile how they’ve bought it all? I dunno, I can’t bring myself to hate them as much as I hate Man U, and if I could goose a financially doped club to get hard sanctions I’d choose Chelsea over City.

But for neutrals you’d hope they’d see the youngest team in the league, youngest manager in the league, some young English academy players and a team that plays great football and they’d think ‘yeah I’m going to root for you guys’ but I don’t get that feeling.

The FA should make sure thy count up all these players surrounding the ref carefully so we know exactly how many we can have and not get a charge.
I wonder what that Wolves player Lemina thinks after getting sent off for being further away from the ref as every single City player here

When you get an over officious ref who insists on teams (usually teams chasing a goal) to take a free kick (usually a defensive third free kick) from a particular place and he goes back a couple of times to say ‘no, back there please!’ Does he ever book a player? Of course not which makes the Tomiyasu booking strange because he’s essentially doing the same thing.
One of the small nuance refereeing things that just didn’t need to happen in the game. Gave Ederson, Walker, bernardo so many warnings for time wasting and foul play and it seemed like he felt because he’d booked a few city players for those kind of technical infringements he needed to level it up in some way.