Dreadful Outting Against Chelsea

Embarrassing.

I've never seen a team react so poorly to falling behind than Manchester City looked today against Chelsea. Not ever have I even seen my local MLS side, Real Salt Lake, look so incredibly shellshocked!

Although, there were a lot of similarities between City and RSL today. The goalkeeping looked pretty good behind a weak defense. Like Salt Lake's Nick Rimando, Joe Heart pulled out some incredible saves even while bleeding 6 goals.

It was about the 52nd minute before I was able to tune in to the match and the Citizens were already 2-0 down. But, it wasn't the score-line that concerned me. Watching only for a few moments you knew something was wrong. City looked dreadful.

Chelsea pushed freely into their penalty area, while the City backline looked extraordinarily timid to go forward. To the point that no defender dared to take the ball forward. They would pass sideways between themselves and back to the goalkeeper. The only way the ball got up field was when Heart would lump it up over the halfway line.

And that was when they had the ball. The idea of playing defense is trying to get the ball from the other team, or at least attempt to get in their way as they push toward your own goal. Well, neither of those seemed to be priority of the Man City defense today. They looked more eager to get off the pitch than actually play.

City had not been available for me to watch in over a month, and I knew Chelsea would be a stiff challenge, but I figured they boys would at least show up for the challenge.