It's safe to say Manchester City's Champions League trip to Denmark didn't go to plan.
Pep Guardiola had seen his City side breeze past Copenhagen at the Etihad six days before, and felt that his squad had enough to record another three points at the Parken Stadium with a few changes including the resting of Erling Haaland. With a trip to Liverpool following on Sunday — an away game City have won just once since 2003 — appeared to take priority over Copenhagen.
As well as Haaland, Guardiola rested Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden and Ruben Dias. He will surely have hoped to give starters Joao Cancelo, Kevin De Bruyne, Rodri and Ilkay Gundogan a rest later in the game if they were as comfortable as they had been last week.
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So when Rodri fired City ahead with a brilliant effort, Guardiola will have been delighted. Except that sparked the beginning of City's downfall, with referee Artur Dias wrongly ruling the effort out after it brushed Riyad Mahrez's arm in the build-up. Aside from the fact that UEFA's rules explicitly state accidental handballs in the build-up to a teammate scoring shouldn't be punished, referee Dias needed plenty of persuasion when he reviewed the incident on his monitor. It wasn't a clear and obvious error, yet he still ruled it out.
And that probably played on his mind when the ball hit a Copenhagen arm in the box as Manuel Akanji jostled for a cross. Again, there was no intention, and the arm was locked with Akanji's as the ball came in. Yet the precedent had been set, and City had the penalty. Unfortunately for them, Mahrez missed it, and the scores remained level.
On one hand, two wrong decisions were cancelled out. Yet if Rodri's goal had rightfully stood, and the penalty was not given, City would have been 1-0 ahead and in control, rather than level at 0-0 in front of a now-buoyant home crowd.
Whether those instances affected Sergio Gomez's decision to haul down Hakon Arnar Haraldsson as the last man minutes later to earn himself a very avoidable red card, is only something the Spaniard can answer. After half an hour, though, City were still level and down to ten men, completely throwing Guardiola's pre-match plans out of the window and raising the volume inside Parken Stadium further.
Mahrez, now shot of confidence, was substituted in the following defensive reshuffle, and it feels like his wait for another start may be a long one. Guardiola has twice criticised his fitness in recent weeks, so despite two goals in two starts in that period, he now has a missed penalty and was deemed surplus to requirements after the red card.
Any steps forward he took in the last week have been reversed, which could take some time to recover from, and he probably won't start against Liverpool on Sunday.
Similarly, Gomez has surely played his way out of the starting line-up at Anfield, with his suspension for the trip to Borussia Dortmund further stretching the injury-hit defence — and having a knock-on impact on the Premier League games with Brighton and Leicester before and after.
As a result of his mistake, Dias was deprived of a full night off, instead playing an hour in a 10-man side, while Aymeric Laporte looked shattered when he was substituted late on. Akanji will also have done more running than planned.
The extra requirements of Rodri, De Bruyne, Grealish and co. upfront will also mean Guardiola has to be a bit cleverer with his rotation in the coming weeks. Even with qualification for the Champions League knockout stages secured thanks to Dortmund's draw with Sevilla, any future plans to rest players around the remaining fixtures against those opponents has been made more complicated.
A draw in the circumstances is a positive result, and City showed plenty of character in adversity. The knock-on implications, however, could continue to be felt for some time.
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