New boy Omar Marmoush can breathe new life into Man City but Abdukodir Khusanov has debut to forget vs Chelsea
PEP GUARDIOLA took a big gamble by throwing £92.5 million worth of new talent straight in for this top four showdown.
It threatened to back-fire when Uzbek defender Abdukodir Khusanov made a major blunder in the third minute of his Manchester City career to gift Chelsea the lead.
But at least there was a hugely encouraging debut from Egyptian forward Omar Marmoush – who played a big part in helping City back into the game.
The £59 million ace has been one of the stand out stars of the German league this season thanks to his 20 goals – not to mention the assists.
And he has the energy to breathe new life into what has been a spluttering season for the champions.
Marmoush had a couple of great chances and also saw a goal chalked off for offside during his 74 minute run-out.
He also showed promising signs of a link up with Erling Haaland – which almost led to a goal midway through the second half.
The only downside was a habit of running offside – but put that down to over-enthusiasm as he tried to make an impression on his first run out.
Fellow new arrival Khusanov will need more than an arm round his shoulder over the next few days after the way his debut started.
Thankfully for him it didn’t get notably worse after that second minute blunder that gifted the visitors the lead – because for a while it looked like it might do.
He got a yellow card a couple of minutes later and on a couple of occasions he looked in danger of getting another one.
Still there was a crucial block to deny Jadon Sancho a second goal of the night for the visitors and a sliding tackle that brought enthusiastic applause from his manager.
The first Uzbek to play in the Prem lasted until the 54th minute when Guardiola replaced him with John Stones.
City’s crowd are a forgiving bunch and he was given a generous round of applause as he made his way off – so that will have made him feel better.
It always looked like a big gamble from Pep to pitch him straight in – after all he’s only played just over 30 games of top level football.