Sergio Aguero celebrates a goal vs Leeds (mirror.co.uk
Once upon a time, Leeds United was one of the top teams in English football and Manchester City were the club trying to come back up through the ranks. That is certainly not the case anymore, and hasn't been for awhile. Leeds took on City yesterday in the 5th round of the FA Cup, but couldn't call up any memories of their storied past as Sergio Aguero and company ran roughshod over the Championship side. At one point the Leeds fans began chanting "You're nothing special, we lose every week."
City took ownership of the contest right from the opening whistle and converted the very first chance of the game on five minutes. They engaged in some gorgeous one and two touch passing in the Leeds penalty area, which lead to Carlos Tevez finding Yaya Toure driving toward the goal. Toure secured the pinpoint pass from the Argentine, gave the last Leeds defender and the goalkeeper the traffic cone treatment, and easily slotted the ball into the empty net to give City the 1-0 lead.
The home side continued to press the advantage as well, as it seemed like Leeds couldn't get a touch on the ball. City looked every bit the Premier League Champions. In the 14th minute, they played in Sergio Aguero who came at the goal from Leeds' right along the end line. Trying to stop him, Leeds defender Tom Lees grabbed him a couple of times about the arm and chest. Aguero looked pleadingly at the referee, who somewhat hesitantly blew for a penalty. Aguero put the PK in top of the net to make it 2-0 on 15 minutes and effectively took all the pace out of the match. Personally, I thought it was a pretty cheap penalty. Was it a foul and thus a PK by the letter of the law? Probably, but you often see far more contact go unpunished in the penalty area.
In the end it didn't matter much though, but it took City until well into the second half to go further ahead. In the 52nd minute Aguero again found himself coming up the end line. This time he unleashed a nifty little cross to the front of goal, which Tevez eagerly connected with, jumping into the air and basically deflecting the ball over the line with his body to make it 3-0.
Surely Leeds must have had some quality chances though, right? Well, not really. In the 56th minute Rodolph Austin smacked a shot from distance that ended up being closer to row ZZZ than the goal. The Leeds fans behind the goal had a bit of a laugh at this, refusing to throw the ball back onto the pitch. Finally after security started to make their way to the spot, the Leeds folks gave up their entertainment and returned the expensive match ball. One could hardly blame them for having a bit of sport though, there was nothing going on to interest them down on the pitch.
The match began to resemble a training session, with players completely out of position and zero intensity. City finally put the last nail the in Leeds FA Cup coffin on 74 minutes and made it a complete laugher. David Silva dropped a ball into Aguero who was running in straight on this time. He easily volleyed the ball inside the far post to make it 4-0 and end the day's scoring.
As for City, they now look forward to a big clash this coming weekend with Chelsea in the Premier League. Leeds, who are stuck in midtable in the Championship, will have to go back to the drawing board as a push for promotion seems to be all that they have left. Still, eight points back of the playoff positions, that almost seems out of reach at this point as well.
