Man City overcome hearty Sunderland 1-0

Following last weeks 1-0 loss to Chelsea and a less-than inspiring performance against Aalborg BK in the UEFA Cup, Manchester City defeated Sunderland 1-0 in an equally dismal performance. While the band wagon will hail the win, given that the Black Cats played the match a man down from the fiftieth minute the level of performance is far from deserving celebration. That aside, the victory is well welcomed as it moves the Citizens remarkably three points within a Europa League spot.

With a series of injury concerns Mark Hughes rushed a not nearly full recovered Valeri Bojinov into the starting eleven with Ched Evans and Craig Bellamy on the bench along with Stephen Ireland and Wayne Bridge out. Although the early stage of the match lacked dramatics with the exception of a hideous miss by Shaun Wright-Phillips eight minutes in, things would turn very quickly just before the seven minutes later. An Elano through ball to Shaun Wright-Phillips resulted in Sunderland George McCartney making the slightest contact with the Three Lions capped winger. Whilst the debate will wage on of how much contact was truly made and whether Wright-Phillips made a complete meal of the morsel of contact as he threw his arms up, a red-card was rewarded with a notable sound of shock from Sunderland. However the dramatics were far from over as a few minutes later that spot was pointed to after Steed Malbranque brought down Richards in the area. Robinho then strode up and after more than a touch of arrogance his pithy school-boy effort was denied by 'keeper Márton Fülöp. For the balance of the half while City controlled possession of the ball they could do little with the man advantage and the match went to the break scoreless. After the restart City subsequently handled a number of scoring opportunities poorly but finally four minutes before the hour the oft-criticized Micah Richards headed-in in Elano's free-kick to take the 1-0 lead. After narrowly missing a second goal City's attempts going forward fizzled out and kept Sunderland off the score sheet as the match concluded without further mark.