How do you replace the irreplaceable? The news that Manchester City would be without Erling Haaland until the end of the month, taking his spell of availability to the two-month mark, was the sort of blow that would leave almost any club punchdrunk but not, habitually, this one.
If there is sometimes the feeling that Pep Guardiola enjoys setting a challenging puzzle for his bright sparks, then it was almost as if Kevin De Bruyne had grown weary of any navel gazing as he greedily filled his pockets in his first Premier League minutes since August. “He’s not ready for 90 minutes after five months,” emphasised Guardiola, “but he’s fresh in his mind.” The usually inscrutable playmaker left the field last, to the hugs and acclaim of his players and staff, wearing a smile as wide as the Tyne Bridge.
City’s current personnel quandaries were already put into perspective by Newcastle’s CEO, Darren Eales, and Eddie Howe frankly discussing their club’s continuing financial fair play challenges this week, with much scaremongering about the possibility of a current mainstay or two being sacrificed. The home substitutes bench, populated by stalwarts like Matt Ritchie, Paul Dummett and two goalkeepers, has been a sign of a bare cupboard for a while, and De Bruyne alone in tracksuited form at kick-off clearly underlined how far Newcastle remain from City, however the coming year might pan out.
Earlier there were a few inklings of how Guardiola might consider a short-term fix to his own problem, not least in a couple of first half instances which saw Josko Gvardiol unexpectedly spring up in the centre-forward position. The opening moments of a match at St James’s Park, when deafening music from the public address system gives way to a cacophony of local fervour, is rarely a place to collect one’s thoughts, however.
Remaining a force of nature in their home, Newcastle are the Premier League’s disruptors par excellence, and they certainly destabilised the champions early on. The bizarre start to this game, with Ederson making a foolhardy attempt to continue after being wiped out by Kyle Walker and almost gifting the home side a goal as he limped across his area, gave an initial impression of vulnerability, stoking the Newcastle fire.
Yet while Paris Saint-Germain back in October, for example, found it hard to recover from their first half in the St James’s spin cycle, City appeared to have emerged from their own tumble here dry, creaseless and fabric conditioned. They worked the ball diligently, knowing there were to be no shortcuts without their Norwegian talisman. The first moment of Gvardiol’s occasional Haaland pastiche was at the conclusion of one particularly pleasing right to left to right passing move, which saw his shot blocked by the perennial forest of bodies with which Newcastle doggedly defended. City’s opener quickly followed and the finesse of Bernardo Silva’s delicious finish past Martin Dubravka spoke of their ease in the bearpit.
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Yet City, playing as high up the pitch as if they were chasing the game rather than controlling it, were caught in the space behind Walker twice in the space of a few minutes, their laziness (and the space behind Kyle Walker) punished successively by equally fine finishes by Alexander Isak and Anthony Gordon. There was never any sense that City were not up for the physical side of this despite the origin of Isak’s equaliser, a bone-crunching challenge on Jérémy Doku by Fabian Schär. The setback unquestionably knocked them from their stride, however.
As the eight minutes of stoppage time added for Ederson’s misadventure ticked down the sensation was that the visitors could do with half-time to arrive not so much to regroup but to give Rodri a cold shower, with his short fuse fizzing again after a clash with Bruno Guimarães.
Guardiola’s men recovered their collective composure after the break but this time, they faced a packed and well-set defence. Time for a rethink, and for someone other than the coach to do it. The hush that descended on the stands as De Bruyne left the bench to immediately occupy himself with a direct free-kick betrayed the trepidation his arrival inspired. That was a false alarm as the Belgian’s shot was charged down by the wall, although the action still might have finished in a goal had Julián Álvarez not blazed over in the subsequent panic. The reprieve was temporary, with De Bruyne passing an equaliser into the corner with authority.
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Few better passes were imaginable but somehow he found one for Oscar Bobb’s winner, telling us that the months of inactivity have if anything fired his imagination, a player with a different understanding of geometry than almost any footballer on the planet. “You just hope he’s rusty and not enough to full speed yet,” sighed Eddie Howe, “and then he comes on and delivers that.” Why should Guardiola concoct a plan for life without Haaland when he has a mind who can design it for him?