Another Stephen Tudor article

cant get that article Blue any other links?

The Blues can and will get better as they look to compete on all fronts this season

LEGENDARY NFL coach Vince Lombardi once said, “Perfection isn’t attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence”.
It is a credo that is both inspiring and reassuring and applies to life as much as it does to sport. As motivational lines go, its right up there.

It’s a line I would have once bought wholesale, until the 2000s heralded Tiger’s languid prowling of the fairways and Federer’s sumptuous elegance on the baseline. Closer to home, and more closely aligned with my own personal interests, this decade of rare supermen also gave us Ronnie O’Sullivan, a phenomenon whose understanding of angles and touch were so innate that when combined to a ferocious talent it amounted to a DNA lottery win. 

At their peak and in their pomp this trio tethered down entire sports rife with so many vagaries they could make the ordinary go insane and they claimed them as tamed pets. Through ways and means that presumably mystified them as much as it fascinated us, they harnessed their supernatural gifts to redesign a route to greatness and elevate what was previously believed possible. Watch again O’Sullivan’s 147 in the 1997 World Championships. He is the master and the balls, table, rules and physics willingly submit to him. From the moment the first black is potted his eyes light up in possession and, contrary to Lombardi’s assertion, he attains perfection.
For half an hour last night, against a Napoli side at the very height of their powers, Manchester City did likewise. The clues have been there all season that this was coming. 

Last Saturday’s demolition of Stoke was accomplished with such frenetic coherency it dazed the Etihad faithful into collectively declaring it the best football ever served up by their team. That followed a ninety minute neutering of Chelsea and three consecutive dismantlings of Premier League opposition that revealed to one and all that Pep Guardiola’s rewired, remastered City side were close to breathing in rarefied air. The stats backed up our eyes. The most goals scored from the opening eight league games since 1895; the best goal difference across Europe’s top five leagues; a central defender boasting an overall 97% pass accuracy and a 20-year-old forward whose goals and assists matched that of his starts.

Then there was Kevin De Bruyne - his right boot O’Sullivan’s cue - whose searching balls have elicited shocked disbelief from old stagers who have witnessed more passes in their lifetime than can be shown on a standard calculator. 

The clues were there then, as clear as day, as City prepared for what many believed would be their sternest test yet and given the exceptional fare that had gone before, perhaps Blues were within their right to expect more of the same. Instead, they got perfection, as sustained as it is humanly, sportingly possible for perfection to be sustained. Half an hour of it. 
Brilliant and unbeaten in Serie A, the visitors were immediately cowed by a flurry of rapid possession that was so incisive and imaginative it often resulted in the human eye remaining one pass behind. Mere minutes in, De Bruyne prodded a ball at knee-height down to Jesus, who only had Reina to beat but the referee wrongly gave a foul. Soon after Sterling finished off a typically intricate move and while the capacity crowd were still absorbing that, De Bruyne power-curled a beauty across the box for Jesus to redirect home. With Napoli in disarray, City’s cruelty only intensified, tauntingly inviting the high-press and finding new and daring paths out to pattern the ball up to De Bruyne, who cushioned the underside of the bar.

Moments later, another shot was somehow bundled off the line. In that extraordinary opening thirty minutes it could and should have been 5-0 and if you think this write-up is pretentious, just imagine the flowery prose had it been so.

It took Napoli – prolific and dangerous and weekly destroyers of Italian defending – 38 minutes before they fashioned a shot on target. Until then they were buffeted and bewildered in a storm of perfect football. 

Which I have seen before from a British team, as you undoubtedly have too. From Henry’s Arsenal, and twice-fold from United, and going back a little further to the imperious strut of Barnes and Beardsley at Anfield. They reached transcendence for thirds of games. formulating passages of play that blew the mind. They warranted prose so flowery the page could double as a meadow. Never before though have I ever witnessed it domestically, executed at such speed and involving such complexity. It was an altogether new, redesigned route to greatness.
Conceived by the beautiful mind of Guardiola and performed by players having the time of their lives, it is not only the attainment of this perfection that should be lauded but the striving for it there-after. Even when standards slipped to mere excellence and then down to periods of struggle, they refused to deviate from taking the risks that can so reward. Playing out from the back led to a second half penalty and necessary heroics from Stones but still there was no shred of compromise, because you don’t pick and choose when to elevate what was previously believed possible: it is a constant, valiant fight. How often do you see O’Sullivan forego a long red?
Which only suggests there is yet more to come from this uncommonly aesthetic side; a side imbued with an unquenchable ambition to be pitch perfect.

There are some who say Pep Guardiola is a chequebook manager; that he only excels when furnished with exceptional players. These people should not ever be listened to.

Cheers blue all I could get was a betting page???

Odd...the link above opened fine for me.