What happen to Manchester City, Aston Villa successfully pressuring Manchester City and that make Manchester City can only give 3 shots. The absence of Rodri really make Manchester City looks like a mediocre club. Alvarez can still able to replace De Bruyne, but there's no one can replace Rodri even they have 3-4 defensive midfielders.
Aston Villa outperformed Man City in every aspect in this match. I believe it's due to Man City's strong determination, but Aston Villa's aggressive play seemed to disrupt Pep Guardiola's plans. Aston Villa executed an excellent defensive blockade.
In the final statistics of the game, Man City only managed 2 shots on target. Despite having a 54% ball possession advantage, I observed a significant decline in Man City's gameplay.
This could be a sign that English Premier League clubs have more evenly distributed strength, not solely concentrated within the top 6 clubs. The match showcased that any team, regardless of their standing, can present a formidable challenge to even the traditionally stronger sides.
It was a brilliant and magnificent performance by Aston Villa their match possession of 46% attest to the fact Aston Villa took the game to their visitors and played their best match of the season while Man City possession was 56% unfortunately unfortunately with few goal scoring chances, it was a very entertaining match by both team both team deployed attacking display, however Villa could have scored more goals and kudos to Martinez for his brilliant saves which could change the match had Man City scored their scoring chances, with this result Man City had lost 3 matches this season thus their title bid is gradually waning.