Balotelli shoulders no blame, it was a tale of two Cities

Manchester City continued their march in the Premier League with a 5-1 decimation of the lads from Norfolk.

Going in we knew it was going to be a tough game as Norwich would look to keep bodies behind the ball and break when they could. Early on it was clear that one City would attack all day and the other City was content to stay in their own penalty area all day.

This tactic worked for the first half an hour of the game before Micah Richards broke into the box and drove a ball to the feet of Aguero.

The Argentine was literally surrounded by Norwich players who stuck with him as he shimmied one way and then the next, eventually getting a shot off with the outside of his right boot which left Ruddy unsighted and wrong footed.

For all their dominance though it would be just the one goal that would separate the two Cities at the interval.

Less than five minutes into the second half though Manchester City doubled that lead with a very strangely defended free kick. Nasri looked to lift the ball into the Norwich area in hopes of someone in sky blue getting a head on it. Instead, no one touched it, not even the real yellow and green team. That left Ruddy, again unprepared, thinking that one of his defenders would have cleared it so in the end all he could do was parry it into the net.

From then on it was only a matter of how many City would score such was the dominance of the home side. Frustratingly enough it wouldn’t be until a little over twenty minutes from time before City added a third. This time it was Toure, Yaya that is, who was given the ball from a Silva short corner and the Ivorian curled the ball past Ruddy from about twelve yards out.

Roberto Mancini then decided to switch it up a little and brought on Balotelli and Johnson for Aguero and Nasri as the home side would look to put the game to bed.

All one way traffic now right, well not so fast.

It seems that Joe Hart doesn’t feel as if he’s had a game unless he picks the ball out of the back of the net and although today it looked as if he may not get the opportunity, Norwich’s lone striker, Steve Morison did pull one back with a great header after out jumping Clichy.

But with only two shots on target all afternoon it would hardly signal a great comeback.

Just to be sure though Mancini switched out Dzeko for DeJong!

Then with two minutes left on the clock both earlier substitutes got on the score sheet.

Firstly Balotelli is just an awesome talent and brings conversation and comment wherever he goes. Some of it is bad but today it was all good. Cichy found Toure who squared it into the path of Balotelli. The Italian lifts it over Ruddy and almost stand on the goaline to shoulder it in as it came down, no one around and absolute arrogance of the best possible kind.

Then, as time was running down, Adam Johnson realised he wasn’t going to let some Italian get all the headlines and as the Norwich player Hoolahan loses the ball to Clichy who in turn picks out Johnson.

Johnson takes a touch to get it to his left foot before drilling it past Ruddy who by now is just randomly diving hoping to get something on something! 5-1 City.

Manchester City fans shout that they want six, but they’ll have to have five and like it.

We’re City, we score when we want!

PA Cityboy