Rodri, who scored what many believed to be the clinching goal at Stamford Bridge, is no small man, and he did not display a little knee slide.
In the 86th minute, a first-time effort by Manchester City’s midfield maestro deflected off Thiago Silva and into the net to give the visitors a 4-3 lead. The champs would secure an additional crucial three points by simply holding out the remaining time.
As Sheffield United and Rodri discovered earlier in the season, the Premier League is still striving for more play time during games, so scoring goals late is not as common as it once was. When the teams played back in August, Jayden Bogle scored an equaliser versus City in the 85th minute, but Rodri’s goal gave the Blues the lead once more.
His post-mortem remarks were instructive. “The game is now different. After their 2-1 victory, he declared, “Added time is now an extra 10% of the game.” “We know now with extra time you still have 10-15 minutes to go so we had the mentality that we could score again.”
Following Rodri’s goal against Chelsea, Pep Guardiola turned to assistant Juanma Lillo and informed him that a lot more was yet to come. As he stated in his press conference following the event: “Many things happened.”
The Premier League’s in-season refereeing alterations have necessitated a shift in perspective from teams who before would have assumed there were just a few minutes remaining. While the team defending cannot easily run out the clock, attacking teams do not need to be as frantic.
Eight minutes of injury time were called in the stadium shortly after the goal, and eleven minutes were actually played due to Cole Palmer’s penalty delays. The only other match with more goals was the Community Shield against Arsenal at the start of the season, when officials were eager to enforce the new regulations and also saw Leandro Trossard score at the end of the game. That is the second most goals City have played in a game this season, and seven goals from the first half also means that 17 goals is the second most overall.
It’s easy to observe the difference between officiating the Champions League season and not. Although City’s season-long average of minutes added on across all competitions is just over 11, in European games it is just under seven, and on Tuesday night against Young Boys, they played just a third of the eighteen minutes added on during their Sunday Premier League match.
Now that they have experienced both sides of a late game-changing goal, City will look to Stamford Bridge for inspiration and will try to apply the mentality adjustment they have already adopted for chasing goals to lead defence.