Manchester City 4 Aston Villa 1: First real test ends in failure

The first real test for the manager and it doesn't end how we would have liked. We got spanked. You can not call 4-1 anything else and well, it doesn't look good.

We can gloss it over though. Kid ourselves that everything is fine. We've only lost once and we are still in the top half of the table. We can kid ourselves but that is all we are doing.

So, I'm not going to try and kid you, it wasn't great. For the first ten minutes it was okay, but after that, we went and played 4-5-1 with three strikers on the pitch and our best creative player of the season so far, Barry Bannan, on the bench.

For a few minutes into the match, I thought we were going to go at them, but it didn't last long and when Manchester City found their stride, they found it. You rarely see a long, hopeful, ball from the good sides and we made a few today.

Unbeaten run over, but before I end this post, something nice to say about James Milner. He scored today and from what I saw, he didn't really celebrate. If it turns out to be exactly what he did, a bit of class and nice to see.

Team

Given, Hutton, Dunne, Clark, Warnock, Delph, Petrov, Ireland, Heskey, Agbonlahor, Bent. Subs: Guzan, N'Zogbia, Albrighton, Cuellar, Bannan, Weimann, Herd.

Man of the match

Please vote to the right. You never know, we might be surprised. I need to watch the game again before making up my mind.