1. Kompany loss overshadows City’s progression
IT’S ALWAYS EASY to pick faults with the benefit of hindsight, but Manuel Pellegrini may now be regretting risking key defender Vincent Kompany in tonight’s Champions League encounter.
Kompany hobbled off early in this evening’s clash with Dynamo Kiev and is now expected to be out for at least a month after picking up his 14th calf injury since joining City.
In a tie that the Etihad outfit never looked in danger of losing following a convincing first-leg win, it seems legitimate to question the wisdom of Pellegrini selecting Kompany this evening.
City also lost a second centre-back, Nicolas Otamendi, through injury, but replacements Martin Demichelis and Eliaquim Mangala were barely tested by a limp Dynamo Kiev attack.
Yet while Kompany’s absence did not matter in this instance, over the course of the season, it is seemingly a huge blow for a City side far from guaranteed Champions League football next year.
The stats illustrate that, without Kompany, they are a vastly inferior team, and his latest setback comes at a crucial point of the campaign, as they bid to balance Champions League progress with the consolidation of a top-four spot.
OptaJoe / Twitter
OptaJoe / Twitter / Twitter
2. Dynamo Kiev out of their depth
Watching tonight’s game, it seemed fair to wonder how Dynamo Kiev reached this point of the competition in the first place, so inept was their performance.
The game resembled a pre-season friendly rather than a Champions League round of 16 match more often than not, as Dynamo played like a beaten team from the outset.
While both sides displayed a lack of intensity for much of the game, the onus was on the visitors to attack, as they were chasing a difficult but not necessarily insurmountable 3-1 first-leg deficit.
Sergei Rebrov’s men previously emerged in second place from a weak enough group that included Chelsea, Porto and Maccabi Tel Aviv, and their tepid performance tonight (and in the first leg) was a poor reflection on the Champions League’s standard this year.
3. Atletico’s excellent Champions League record continues
Few European sides have punched above their weight more often than Atletico Madrid in recent seasons.
The Spanish team’s 8-7 penalty shootout victory over PSV this evening was the second consecutive season in which they reached the quarter-finals via a penalty shootout following last season’s defeat of Bayer Leverkusen, while only a last-minute Real Madrid goal stopped them winning the competition outright in the 2013-14 campaign?
So what’s the secret of Diego Simeone’s side success?
While there are many more talented attacking teams in the competition, few others have such a solid foundation, as reflected by the 13 clean sheets they have earned in their last 17 Champions League matches.
Atlerico also sit second in La Liga currently, and unsurprisingly, have the best defensive record in the league by far, having conceded just 12 goals in total since the start of the campaign.
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