It was a decent game, all things considered. We played a lot better than we have done in previous seasons, but were let down by a few unpleasant but pertinent facts:
1) Soldado is not, and will never ,ever, ever be even close to the level of Aguero or Jovetic. To be fair, Ade doesn't get close either, but the difference between the offenses today was a rather prosaic but ultimately key difference between us and City. As for his individual performance, there is only so much that good passing and instinctive one-twos can do for a striker who seems to pathologically hate scoring in any way, and ultimately, unlucky or otherwise, these are the games that Robbie will be judged on.
2) Fazio's struggled against pace the entire game, so it wasn't a surprise to see him lose Aguero and commit the tug that saw him sent off: it's understandable given that this was a difficult debut for anyone to have to make, though. I'll bite my tongue and hold in the 'bargain buy' comments.
Overall, it was a decent performance, but City's far, far better and more expensive players and our shaky defense counted against us in the end. Take it on the chin and move on.
Also, Kaboul laughing with Milner at the end there was uncalled for and rather depressing to see. You're the damn team captain: you should be hurting at losses, not laughing with opposition players. Just amplifies my doubts about his suitability for the post of captain.
