Manchester City Still Seeking Top Gear Despite Champions League Progression

They always say that a referee has done a good job if he isn't seen. For the official to stay unnoticed for 90 minutes means there have been no dodgy decisions, no contentious calls and nobody feeling aggrieved.

That mustn't have been made clear to Cuneyt Cakir, who appeared to have deployed his Random Decision Generator as he took charge of Manchester City's 1-1 draw with Borussia Monchengladbach on Wednesday evening.

It started fairly well, as a few rough-and-tumble challenges were let go. City felt a little upset that the refereed hadn't whistled for a foul on John Stones for the opening goal of the match, as Lars Stindl seemed to shove the centre-back out of the way when breaking through. He crossed for Raffael to smash the ball home. But it wasn't an outrageous decision, and the defender could have done better.

Things then took a turn for the frustrating when Sergio Aguero was twice penalised for fouls he could do little about. On both occasions, the defender in front of him stopped dead in his tracks, forcing the Argentinian to run into their backs. And the official pulled him up on it.

The game began to take a stop-start pattern, as every little bump and barge was penalised.

Stindl got his comeuppance later on, though. Having just been booked, he blocked off Nicolas Otamendi as the centre-back challenged for the ball. The referee felt he had no choice but to show the German a second yellow—but a stern talking to and a final warning wouldn't have been unacceptable, especially with Otamendi's overreaction to the foul.

Cakir saved his strangest decision for 12 minutes later. There could be no disputing Fernandinho's first yellow card—a cynical pullback to prevent a Gladbach breakaway—but his second appeared to be for nothing at all. He seemed to just run straight past his opponent, which was enough for the official to blow and produce a card.

The referee let Aleksandar Kolarov get away with a late challenge on the edge of the home side's box and only showed a yellow to Raffael for a studs-up, two-footed challenge that left Ilkay Gundogan in a heap.

Frankly, it was a miracle a game of football happened in between all of the official's decisions—and if this was his attempt at staying inconspicuous, then heaven knows what he'd be like when trying to be more ostentatious.

In among all of the nonsense of Wednesday's 1-1 draw, City made it through to the knockout phase of the Champions League for the fourth year running. That should have been the headline.

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Despite criticisms that they weren't overly offensive in the second half, especially for the short period when they had an extra man, Pep Guardiola's team handled the evening well.

After all, they qualified while not getting out of second gear—and they used only the energy they needed to. It won't make the game with Burnley on Saturday lunchtime much easier, but it's better going to Turf Moor on the back of a comfortable qualification than it would have been if the team had run like headless chickens for 90 minutes to get a result in Germany.

A win would no doubt have been better, but few will grumble at being assured of a knockout-phase place. By the end of the match, with Barcelona beating Celtic in the other Group C fixture, a draw was enough to see them through, and City made sure of it with five minutes of keep-ball to run down the clock.

Guardiola was going to send Fernando on to the field for the closing stages, but the ball never went out of play because of his side's control, so the Brazilian sat back down instead.

Few ever thought otherwise, but the 1-1 draw in Germany demonstrated how the Catalan sees the sport much differently to most people. Throughout the game, the manager continued to make tactical tweaks to his team—shifting from three at the back to four in defence quite regularly.

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Jesus Navas put in a decent display for a man who played on the right wing, at right-back and in a central attacking-midfield role. Kolarov was a centre-half and a left-back. Raheem Sterling was a left wing-back, a left-winger and a right-winger too.

Never let it be said that City's squad isn't versatile.

Of course, City's performance wasn't of the high standard that had seen them beat Barcelona in the previous matchday—but the truth was it didn't need to be. They knew a draw was enough to finish above their opposition on head-to-head record and that would see them through barring Celtic grabbing an unlikely two wins from their final two group-stage games.

However, it is the latest in a string of games in which the City fans have been left frustrated, watching their team create only a few opportunities and squander most of them.

Aguero should have done better when faced with Gladbach goalkeeper Yann Sommer, who saved the Argentinian's close-range effort well. Gundogan's strike from the edge of the box after a Kevin De Bruyne corner was well tipped around the post. Aside from those and David Silva's equaliser on the stroke of half-time—which was probably City's best move of the game—the visitors had long potshots and little more.

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That, however, is just a short-term problem for the manager and is something he should be able to rectify in time. The club is clearly his biggest challenge in management, since while he did a lot to change what was happening at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, he did have a much better starting point. City aren't in the European elite; his previous clubs were.

It's to his credit that they've cruised through to the knockout phase of the Champions League with a game to spare and are sitting pretty in touching distance of the top of the Premier League. This is all while the Catalan is trying to impose his ideas and his footballing system on players who have never before done anything like what he's asking them to do.

With the club into the next phase in Europe, it eases the pressure for the manager in the final group match. That could be crucial, as the home tie with Celtic comes between a top-of-the-table clash with Chelsea at the Etihad Stadium and a trip to Premier League champions Leicester City, who may be underperforming this season but aren't pushovers.

Guardiola, though, was happy his team can be rotated without too much danger, but he did want to see better performances: "We are going to prioritise our games in the Premier League now, and it looks better, but we are going to see," he said to reporters after the match.

"Now we have one week to prepare like the other teams, but if we play some minutes like we did in the first half here, we are going to lose. If we play some minutes like we did in other parts of the game, we will be better."

However, the Catalan wouldn't be drawn on commenting about the officiating: "The decision is done. Maybe the German people know that in three years [at Bayern], I didn't speak about the referee, but, erm, OK."