Chelsea and Manchester City will play in the Champions League final later this month but before that, these two sides were involved in a sort of rehearsal this weekend in the Premier League.
City welcomed Chelsea to the Etihad on Saturday and a win in this match would have put the Premier League title officially in Pep Guardiola’s hands. But the home side ended up losing to match 2-1, thanks to a last-gasp goal from Marcos Alonso.
This is the second time Manchester City have lost to Chelsea(the previous one being in the FA Cup last month) and according to Chelsea legend Alan Hudson, Saturday’s loss in particular, will cause a big blow to Guardiola’s thought process.
“This was a huge psychological blow to Pep and his players, who compared to Chelsea looked like their season is ending, whereas Chelsea have just begun,” Hudson told CaughtOffside.
“I said they’d be unbeaten in the three remaining matches with City and apart from a calamitous two minutes before half time, they won with ease.
“The penalty miss from Sergio Aguero was as important as Edouard Mendy’s fantastic save from Karim Benzema. That one moment that changes the course of a match.
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“Tuchel will sleep a lot better than Pep in the days leading up to the big one, I think that says it all. All of a sudden Pep has to think twice about how to break Chelsea down.”
It’s true that in both these matches, Chelsea did not play a full-strength Manchester City side so the Blues just cannot go into the Champions League final thinking they know everything.
But the one thing that Thomas Tuchel will be sure of is that these two games will be playing inside Guardiola’s mind on a loop.
The Manchester City boss has this habit of using a false-nine system in big games, something which he did not do either in the FA Cup game or this weekend. We feel the City boss will revert to this tactic in the final and this is possibly the final piece of trick that the Spanish manager has up his sleeve.
