Manchester City’s last ever trip to Goodison Park ended in victory as they eventually defeated Everton 2-0 on Saturday afternoon.
Neither side stamped their authority on a goalless and largely drab first half, with a James Tarkowski header against the post the nearest either came to a goal.
But both teams showed more urgency after the break, and, as City exerted a growing amount of pressure on the game, the increasingly influential Nico O’Reilly popped up with a sharp finish to guide City to three valuable points in the race for a top-five finish. Mateo Kovacic then made it safe in injury time to extend City’s unbeaten Premier League run against Everton to 16 games.
Sam Lee dissects the main talking points from the game.
Nico O’Reilly to the rescue (again)
It is not that O’Reilly does not look comfortable at left-back but you can certainly tell he is an attacking midfielder — largely because of how composed and, increasingly, decisive he is in the final third.
After he set up both City goals in the FA Cup win at Bournemouth, Guardiola joked that the youngster will definitely start the semi-final at Wembley. It was a joke at the time but the 19-year-old has actually started every game since then.
He is an attacking midfielder by trade, although Guardiola wants to convert him to a holding midfielder due to his height. The logic seems to be that to learn those defensive habits, he will do it well out of his comfort zone. The absence from the line-up of Abdukhodir Khusanov in recent weeks has confused supporters because the Uzbekistan international had made a good start to life and has become very popular, but it seems that the reason is purely because O’Reilly — who scored and had a big hand in another goal last weekend — is adding a lot of value at left-back, which then allows Josko Gvardiol, who was very good here, to play at centre-back with Ruben Dias.
It all seems to be going quite well, too.
O’Reilly scores past Jordan Pickford in the 84th minute (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Guardiola reverts to his passing playbook
So often, the secret to City’s success in difficult away matches has been death by a million passes. Today, the approach felt more like survival by a million passes.
Guardiola is on record saying that certain stadiums require a patient approach specifically because of the atmosphere the fans can generate, Copenhagen being the example in that case but there are clearly more. Goodison Park, which has two games to go before it closes its doors for good, would be one to add to that list.
This was a poor game and there was a lot of poor execution on display but it seemed clear from the outset that City wanted to play ‘one-thousand-million passes’, as Guardiola says, to ensure firstly that they kept the ball and then reap the benefits of everything that comes with it: quiet crowd, no home team momentum, no set-pieces conceded, everything very calm and stable.
In that sense, it was very much job done, and would have been even had O’Reilly and Kovacic not pounced at the end. It did seem that the priority was not losing the match and that anything else would be a bonus, which is something they have deployed in Champions League away ties before, and given their baby steps towards their old confidence, it would be no surprise if they had been happy with a point here.
That also seemed to be the case at Old Trafford a couple of weeks ago, but fortunately it turned out to be so much more on Merseyside.
(Jan Kruger/Getty Images)
Three crucial points at the start of a key period
This was a massive victory in City’s push for the top five.
As this game meandered for much of the second half, debates start to be had about whether City should be making more of a push for victory given the competition for Champions League qualification, but it always felt, at least to me, that a draw would be a solid outcome.
Not just because Everton are now much harder to beat than they were earlier this season but because so many other teams still have to play each other. Aston Villa, for example, play Newcastle 45 minutes after this game finished.
Newcastle also have to play Chelsea, who in turn play Nottingham Forest on the final day (as well as Fulham, Liverpool and Manchester United).
Had City not won here then beating Villa at the Etihad on Tuesday night would have become even more important but as well as all those other teams playing each other, City can be relatively confident of beating Wolves at home and then Southampton away, leaving a final home game of the season against Bournemouth, which is certainly winnable, before a final day trip to Fulham.
City still have the same hopes in all of those games, of course, but now have three points from Goodison to factor into the equation. Their chances of making next season’s Champions League suddenly look extremely promising.
(Carl Recine/Getty Images)
What did Guardiola say?
We will bring you this after he has spoken at the post-match press conference.
What next for City?
Tuesday, April 22: Aston Villa (H), Premier League, 8pm UK, 3pm ET
(Header photo: Getty Images)