It all looked so easy. If you had switched the game on in the second half, you probably wouldn’t have even noticed City were playing with 10 men.
Yet the effort that went into maintaining such a high level of performance while a man down was nothing short of superhuman from Pep Guardiola’s side.
Despite losing one of the back four, City chose not to make a substitution to reinforce their defence, trusting the players on the field and their ability to play in unfamiliar positions. Rodri dropped into the backline, Bernardo Silva moved inside to play alongside Ilkay Gundogan, while Nathan Ake and John Stones did their best to play at both centre-back and full-back.
