Europa League: Lech Poznan 3-1 Manchester City, Match Recap
This season’s pretenders for the English Premier League title, Manchester City suffered their 3rd successive defeat in 3 different competitions as they were outclassed by Lech Poznan by 3 goals to 1 in Europa League Group A.
The blue side from Manchester started brightly but Luch got the first goal of the match as Dimitrije Injac controlled the ball well and drilled one under the City keeper to open the scoring.
Emmanuel Adebayor got City on level terms while Spanish midfielder, David Silva almost got City ahead but the crossbar got in his way.
The match looked destined for a draw but Manuel Arboleda gave the home team lead close towards the final whistle and Mateusz Mozdzen put the game to bed with a 3rd.
The atmosphere in City camp had not been the best before the game as they had suffered 2 back to back defeats back home in the league. The team really needed this win to get back on track, but it was not to be and there are sure to be some more problems
heading manager Roberto Mancini’s way.
This loss also ended a record run for City in Europe that had seen them remain unbeaten in last 6 games in the competition. Had they won the match, it would have ensured them a place in the next knockout round with 2 more games to play in the group stages.
Now, Manchester City are level on points with Lech Poznan but are 2nd in the table based on goal difference.
Roberto Mancini did himself no favours by accusing the British media of writing lies about his players. City now travel to West Brom to get their Premier League campaign back on track.
Manchester City lost to Wolves in the league on the weekend gone by, and the manager made 8 changes to the team that played in the Premier League. Poznan, on the other hand, didn't had the best of preparations coming into the match. Their manager Jacek Zielinski
was sacked soon after they beat Manchester City 3-1 2 weeks ago at Eastlands.
As the match started, Manchester City did not look flustered by the intimidating welcome by the home crowd, and began the match positively. The visitors did make a number of good chances in early stages but could not make them count.
Roberto Mancini started the match with a formation of 4-2-3-1, the full backs Micah Richards and Wayne Bridge did well to link up in attack on every possible opportunity.
City had a great chance to take the lead in the 18th minute when Adebayor sent in a solid header which was deflected away by the keeper, soon after Patrick Vieira and Dedryck Boyata both went close.
The home team finally came into their own and City could not get the ball out of their box. Injac made full use of the opportunity and drilled the ball into the far corner before City keeper could react.
The first half ended with City trailing by one goal. In the 2nd half, Mancini’s team did start with some purpose. The introduction of David Silva certainly seemed to have made an impact. Emmanuel Adebayor got the visitors level as Milner’s corner
was not collected cleanly by the home side keeper.
Polish team did well to take the lead as the match looked set for a draw; it was a slice of luck that Poznan made full use of.
Krivets' free-kick was well received by Boyata. His header took a deflection by Arboleda and went in to make it 2-1. As City acted instantly to get level again, they left plenty of spaces at the back. Substitute Mozdzen made full use of that and made it
3-1 with a clean finish.
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