After all the talk and hype that surrounded City’s game at Ewood Park today, the blues emerged with a 2-0 win thanks to a debut goal from Emmanuel Adebayor and a coolly taken last minute strike form player of the year Stephen Ireland.
Before the match Sir Bobby Robson, who sadly passed away over the summer, was honoured with both sets of supporters chanting the legendary manager’s name. Then it was down to business.
After an early scare for the blues, Adebayor played the ball wide to Shaun Wright-Phillips, who raced away down the right before squaring the ball back the Adebayor to rifle a right foot shot home to give City the lead.
Shocked by the early goal, Rovers struggled to get a grip on the game but gradually came back and provided a lot of pressure on the City defence and the frailties in defence began to show but the City back four, with Kolo Toure looking in fine form and Shay Given made some excellent saves showing exactly why Mark Hughes signed him in January, the blues held firm and kept Blackburn at bay.
The second half was more open with both teams having chances to score, but the blues had to wait until injury time before sealing the win. Stephen Ireland broke free and attempted to round the keeper. Forced back, Ireland took his time while the Blackburn defence just didn’t want to challenge him and the Irishman picked his spot and slotted past the keeper and defender, just inside the post.
Mark Hughes was delighted with the win, although he did have a slip up himself as he went to ground at the full time whistle. “Many people were expecting us to fall flat on our faces today but fortunately it was just me,” he said in a post match interview.
So the blues are off and running and have that vital first away win under our belts. Already, we have half the number of away wins that we got in the whole of last season but, on the basis of this display, are we good enough to challenge for anything this season? Alan Hansen certainly thinks so. He described our performance as average so to go to a place like Blackburn, where we are usually beaten, and win 2-0 by playing average football, what can we do when we are playing well?
Today’s score was an excellent result. In fairness, the game could have gone either way but City took their chances and Blackburn didn’t. It’s as simple as that. How many times in the past has that been our problem? But we must also tighten up at the back more and not allow the opposition room to move. Against a better team, we might have lost but it is more than likely that we could have stepped up a gear if we needed it today.
A great result and surely it can only get better.