After the match with Atalanta, Man City will have a big match against Liverpool this weekend, a match considered the first leg of the Premier League final. Therefore, coach Pep Guardiola decided to rotate the squad by replacing 5 players compared to the victory over Southampton last weekend. Joao Cancelo, Nicolas Otamendi, Benjamin Mendy, Riyad Mahrez and Gabriel Jesus are the names returning to the starting lineup. In the starting lineup, Man City still uses many pillars such as Ederson, Fernandinho, Gundogan, De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Sterling. With this squad, Man City clearly showed their determination to win 3 points to soon get a ticket to the round of 16 of the Champions League.
In the first leg, Atalanta easily lost to Man City with a score of 1-5. This is also the third consecutive loss for Gian Piero Gasperini and his team in the Champions League this season. However, in the return match last night, they still showed great determination in the hope of regaining their form after the first leg.
Entering the match, Atalanta created the first dangerous opportunity, when Pasalic dropped a wonderful line towards the post far from Man City's goal for defender hateboer to run up and finish in an open position, unfortunately the ball was not accurate.
However, it was not long before Man City had an answer. In the 7th minute, right in the first attack, Gabriel Jesus hit a delicate heels for Raheem Sterling to defeat goalkeeper Gollini, putting Man City 1-0 up.
With the lead, Man City was not too hasty to speed up the match, but always stifled the home team with a completely ball-controlled play. Many shots were deployed all over the pitch to give the away team many scoring opportunities, but Sterling, Jesus, Mahrez and Guendogan all had inaccurate shots or could not beat goalkeeper Gollini.
In the 40th minute, Man City had a chance to double the gap when midfielder Ilicic let the ball touch his hand in a standing position on the fence to block Sterling's free kick. After consulting VAR, the referee decided to award a penalty. But on the 11m mark, Gabriel Jesus finished the ball out of Gollini's goal.
The second half started with a big loss for Man City when goalkeeper Ederson was injured and had to leave the field to make way for Bravo. Just a few minutes later, Atalanta equalized 1-1. Former Chelsea player Mario Pasalic was the one who brought the match back to the starting line with a dangerous header after Gomez's accurate cross.
Disagreeing with the draw, Man City increased the pace of the match. Striker Aguero was brought on. However, facing Atalanta's tight defense, Pep's team faced many difficulties.
The situation became extremely difficult for Man City when goalkeeper Claudio Bravo received a direct red card in the 81st minute after illegally blocking Ilicic's counter-attack. The bad thing is that Pep Guardiola has no more goalkeepers on the bench. He reluctantly had to put Kyle Walker on the field and use this defender in the goalkeeper position.
Since he is not a goalkeeper, Walker handles it very carefully in Man City's goal. Fortunately, in the remaining time of the match, Pep proactively asked his players to keep the ball to reduce pressure on the goal. The match ended in a 1-1 draw. This result was not enough for Man City to win a ticket to continue.
With a 1-1 draw, Man City consolidated their lead with 10 points, 5 points ahead of the 2 teams behind, Shakhtar Donetsk and Dinamo Zagreb. This means that The Citizens have not been able to get an early ticket to the round of 16.
