Stoke City 1 - 0 Man City (Delap s/o 38', Beattie 45')

In today's early kick off we saw City get beat by a Stoke side who started the day in the bottom three.

The first ten minutes were all Citys but after that for the rest of the first half we were just poor,
although we had all of the ball we were just found wanting in lots of areas, our passing was dismal, countless passes made by City players finding Stoke players or nobody at all.

The first half as a whole to watch was poor from both teams and this was confirmed even more so by Delap taking his frustration out on Shaun Wright-Phillips, Delap kicked SWP's legs from behind and then whilst he was on the floor kicked through the ball into SWP's body, Delap was correctly sent off.

At the point of Delap getting sent off you think as a Man City fan things are looking up because although both teams were poor we were the better of the two and then yes you guessed it a terrible piece of defending by Wayne Bridge gifts James Beattie a header to make it 1-0 to the home side right before half time.

After watching the first half it was obvious we were crying out for Elano to come on and create something but no changes were made and the second half started as the first finished with us not being able to break Stoke down and with Stoke keeping everyone behind the ball.

It wasn't long into the second half when Hughes brought Elano on and he did try to pick up the ball and drive forward but with non of his team mates moving in front of him it just came to a halt every time, this was mainly due to the fact nobody on our team had a clue how to unlock Stoke with all their men behind the ball, to sum up the second half Stoke had everyone back and we had no invention to break them down.

I would like to pick out Wayne Bridge today who for 70 minutes was poor, he came to life a little bit towards the end of the game making forward runs but after gifting the opposition a goal for the second game in a row I have to say I want Garrido back in.

Garrido is a player who was improving in every game he played and then was dropped for Ball for no real reason what so ever and with Bridge not impressing me at the moment I would like to see the Spaniard get his go again, I think he would grasp a chance to be first choice left back with both hands.