1516: Mario Balotelli goes down after a stray arm from Robert Huth, the German defender running across the Italian. Balotelli makes a meal of it, sure, but Huth should be more careful that to stick his elbow into someone's face, however harmless the contact.
Pretty uninteresting match tactically, this one.
City;s front-line interesting. Confusing the Stoke defence with their movement. Silva pushing up from the 'hole' to join Balotelli, Tevez starting on the left but drifting everywhere in a completely free role and Toure coming inside from the right.
Looks to me like Toure's starting in the centre, actually, but Silva's drifting makes it looks like he's in the hole rather than the right. But this is to be expected, and past the City players exploiting the hole there's nothing too interesting apart from individual excellent games, like De Jong for example.
Yeah. I'm sort of half paying attention to be fair.
I assumed they were playing 4-2-3-1 w Barry and De Jong deep lying CMs and Silva in the hole.
Actually thought having Toure behind Balotelli worked brilliant against Utd. Balotelli dropped deep quite a lot and Toure was able to drive through the centre. Would like to see him do more of that considering Stoke are just sitting back and packing the midfield.
thats a horrible challenge from yaya, and a ridiculous barge from mario