Manchester City 2 Swansea City 1 match report: Wilfried Bony and Yaya Toure break Swans hearts

Manchester City 2 Swansea City 1

(Getty Images)

To steal a line from Swansea’s greatest poet, Dylan Thomas, the mood of the away dressing room would have been Bible-black. Swansea were managerless and since August the only team they had been capable of beating was the wreckage of Aston Villa. Now they were away at Manchester City and it seemed the only question was by how many they would lose.

In the event Swansea lost by one and that to an outrageous piece of skill in the last minute from Yaya Touré, the ball striking Kelechi Iheanacho before finishing in the corner of Lukasz Fabianski’s net.

Morally, the goal belonged to Touré, who delivered his shot from a wide angle while surrounded by white shirts. His performances have come in for much criticism in the first half of an uneven season but here Touré seemed the player City’s fans will remember.

The Everton midfielder, Ross Barkley, said he enjoyed watching videos of Touré running forward with the ball, taking on defenders with long, languid strides. This was one game in which he did.

Two minutes before Touré scored, Bafétimbi Gomis had driven stunningly past Joe Hart to give the Welsh side an equaliser they had more than deserved. It says something that when Manchester City announced the man of the match, they chose their own goalkeeper.

Wilfried Bony nods home for City's opener (Getty Images)

“I am bitterly disappointed,” said Swansea’s first-team coach, Alan Curtis, the caretaker manager who had played at the Vetch Field when the club had begun their long march through the divisions under John Toshack.

“I thought when Gomis scored it would have been a fantastic point but maybe that is the difference between teams at the bottom and the top – that bit of luck. We showed that the quality is there. So many people had written us off.

“That performance is the standard we have to maintain and, if we do, I am 100 per cent confident we will get out of trouble.”

Curtis was fairly confident he would be in charge for Swansea’s next game, at home to West Ham next Sunday. “We have lost managers before but this (Garry Monk’s sacking) seemed much more personal,” he said. “People seemed determined to get a result for Garry. It has been a funny old week, the kind of week most clubs seem to have these days.

“We have always brought in a manager to suit our style rather than bring someone in to impose his ideas on us. That means the appointment might take longer but the most important thing is that it is the right appointment.”

Whether or not it is Ryan Giggs or the Rangers manager, Mark Warburton, they will take over a side that still looks in reasonable shape.

The removal of Monk, a man who had been deeply associated with the club’s revival over the past dozen years, had been an unnecessarily, messy and drawn-out process. However, against a City side that still looked drained from their dramatic victory over Borussia Mönchengladbach on Tuesday night, they began brightly, soaking up pressure as well as the rain that streamed down in clichéd fashion from the Manchester sky.


 Bafetimbi Gomis celebrates after equalising
 (Getty Images)

Their counter-attacking carried real purpose and they could have been a couple of goals up within the first 20 minutes.

Wayne Routledge was involved in both moves. First, he was put through by a smart ball from Jack Cork and, after easily outpacing Nicolas Otamendi, was denied only by a typically smart piece of goalkeeping from Hart.

Then Routledge, driving down the right, pulled the ball back for Gylfi Sigurdsson, who was also denied by the England keeper. The price was soon paids.

Swansea’s defence has kept a single clean sheet this season and it was breached again in a move that would have seemed horribly simple to the couple of thousand of fans who had made what would, in the conditions, have been a tortuous journey from south Wales.

They were sitting only a few feet away when Wilfried Bony, a man they would know well, lost his marker, Ashley Williams, and headed past Fabianski.

It was the fourth successive time that Bony had scored in this fixture, twice for either side, and there are some who would put the start of Swansea’s decline down to his sale 11 months ago.

Bony is underrated – this was his seventh goal in his last 13 starts – but when you are the reserve striker to Sergio Aguero, being underrated comes with the territory. It is like being Richard Burton’s understudy. Nobody actually wants to see you on stage.

Manchester City: (4-2-3-1) Hart; Sagna, Otamendi, Mangala, Clichy; Toure, Fernandinho; Navas, Silva (De Bruyne, 68), Sterling (Delph, h-t); Bony (Iheanacho, 83).

Swansea: (4-2-3-1) Fabianski; Rangel, Williams, Fernandez, Taylor; Cork, Britton; Routledge (Barrow, 75), Ki, Sigurdsson; Ayew (Gomis, 83).

Referee: Robert Madley.

Man of the match: Hart (Manchester City)

Match rating: 6/10