Mauro Zarate struck twice before an Elano penalty got Man City back into it for a while until a Gary McSheffrey spot kick settled Blues' nerves and saw them home.
Apologies to those of you still weeping into your pints at my lack of a Reading match report, but I've been busy and didn't have time to do one. Basically it was the story of Blues' season - looked ok going forward, but made silly errors at the back, gave away needless free-kicks and didn't defend them properly.
As part of the whole "being busy" thing, at 1.00pm this afternoon, when I'd normally be arriving at The Adam & Eve or The Forge for some pre-match refreshment, I was in Paris. The City. In France. Admittedly, I was boarding a plane at that time, so it gave me a half chance of seeing some of the game. As I landed at Birmingham Airport at 2.35pm I discovered by way of text that the suspended Liam Ridgewell had (sensibly, in my mind) been replaced by Franck Queudrue in the heart of the Blues defence, whilst Damien Johnson returned to captain the side with Mehdi Nafti dropping out. I had no idea who would be in the Manchester City side, but I could have guessed that it would be full of foreigners that no one had heard of until Sven Goran Eriksson signed them for £7.8m. And Darius Vassell.
Three minutes into the game, I arrived, so I'd only missed a Mikael Forssell chance, which was good going really. Blues went on to dominate the opening proceedings, but things weren't quite clicking into place, and allowing Elano far too much time and space on the edge of the area spells disaster, and Benjani (who must be the worst finisher anyone has ever paid more than £275,000 for) nearly made them pay but for striking the post.
Blues continued to press and create chances (not necessarily clearcut) but couldn't make their breakthrough, despite Richard Dunne's unusually poor display - he's normally excellent. As the half wore on, Man City's England hopeful of a goalkeeper, Joe Hart, appeared to carry the ball out of his area before dropping it. This incensed the sparse Blues crowd, as did the subsequent apparent push on Seb Larsson in the box as play continued. Both claims were waved away by everyone's favourite referee, Mr Rob Styles, and this seemed to lift the Blues fans. In fairness to Styles, his one assistant was far better positioned to judge the Hart incident (which did look like it should have gone in Blues' favour), whilst Larsson is so good at the "gamesmanship" side of things these days, you can never tell whether or not he's been fouled.
Shortly following this double dose of controversy, Queudrue played a fantastic defence-splitting pass from deep for Zarate to run onto. Let's just pause the play there to say how composed Queudrue looked at centre-half. He made Ridgewell look like a fish out of water, trying to balance a plate on a stick whilst playing the banjo and juggling. He was good in the air, cleared the ball when he needed to, was composed in playing the ball out sensibly with his excellent left foot when time and space allowed (he did cock up with one right foot pass) and generally looked excellent. He was sent off later, but we'll come to that in a bit.
Anyway, back to the game, and as Hart appeared to be winning the race with Zarate to the ball, the little Argentinian stuck out his right foot and finished with a fine, deft touch past the advancing 'keeper to make it 1-0. It stayed like that until half-time despite more Blues pressure, and at the break you couldn't help think back to the Newcastle home game when Blues should have been more than 1-0 up, but hadn't made their superiority count (Gary McSheffrey was particularly guilty, as usual) and were pegged back.
Fortunately for Blues, Man City lately have actually managed to be worse than Newcastle. They're pretty woeful these days. Once everyone found out they played this Italian, slow tempo, play deep and draw teams in and rely on two quality players (Elano and Martin Petrov, the latter who missed this game) to hit them on the break, they've been pretty poor indeed. Although Blues did drop deeper, with shades of Newcastle, they did manage to get a second when McSheffrey actually did something productive and hit a fine first time ball through to Zarate who finished expertly and probably sealed a future away from St Andrews next season. Which is a shame. We're blessed whilst we have him though.
Game over against a pretty pathetic opposition, you thought. Well, this is Blues, isn't it? It's often described as a rollercoaster ride following Blues, and thankfully I'd been prepared for the ride ahead by Flybe's imitation of 'Nemesis' on my return from Paris when the little propeller plane seemed to do every trick in the book but for a loop-da-loop. Why is it that the children think it's hilarious, whilst the adults all grab hold of anything around them?
Anyway, Fabrice Muamba had showed a couple of signs of trying to be a bit too clever, and a tricky attempt at a first time ball back to Maik Taylor or his defence (it wasn't clear which) went horribly wrong and Benjani (whose only apparent talent appears to be that he's quite quick) was through on goal. He was bundled over by some sort of combination of Queudrue and Radhi Jaidi who'd both got back (Benjani's pace is negated by the fact that he can't control a football) and Rob Styles not only pointed to the spot, but sent Queudrue off (which is a blow, as he looked a natural in the position and will be suspended now). Initially he went to Jaidi from his position of some 60 yards away, suggesting that he had no idea who actually committed the foul. Now, some Blues players look alike, but Queudrue and Jaidi don't come into the category, so that suggested he reacted to Benjani falling over rather than any foul he saw. It was messy regardless, but he was a long way away from the action and it's a debatable decision. After a delay Elano scored and Blues regrouped with ten men, and what looked like a Blues victory at a canter was suddenly in doubt.
Man City threw on another few random foreigners, but were still useless, thankfully. At the other end, Zarate went on the kind of dazzling run we've all seen on YouTube (which included him being about six inches from the byline and STILL going past Needham Onuoha on that side) before squaring the ball. McSheffrey fell over after a fair shoulder-to-shoulder challenge by Sun Jihai, and Rob Styles inwardly celebrated at the chance to "even things up" as we all know that referees do. He pointed to the spot and McSheffrey to the horror of the crowd stepped up and slotted the ball home very well. He was clearly and quite visibly suffering for confidence, so I won't say that he wasn't poor, because he was, but it took guts to take the penalty in such circumstances, so credit to him for taking such a good spot kick. Credit too to Zarate who didn't really question the decision despite being on a hat-trick, and being one of the first to congratulate McSheffrey.
That was it really, and given Arsenal's comeback at Bolton, it turned into a cracking result for Blues. You have to say that but for the somewhat dubious decision with respect to Man City's penalty, Blues may have gone on to keep that elusive clean sheet, but it wasn't to be. This was decent performance though.
That needs to be balanced up with the fact that Man City were dreadful though. I've said for a while now that this was our biggest "banker" of our remaining games, and in my mind, Blues did no more than they should have done in beating Man City, as they've been dreadful for a while. Bolton's defeat helps Blues a lot, but there's still a lot of work to do. It's a much better looking position to start doing it from now though, that's for sure.
Now where are those travel sickness pills...