Manchester City's sporting crisis continues. The inaugural Boxing Day game, played at home at the Etihad Stadium, started optimistically with a goal by Bernardo Silva at the 14th minute. But it was quickly equalised by Ndiaye from Everton. The match ended 1-1.
Everton is struggling, 15th on Premier League, but has had a good track record of conceding no goals and earning points by 0-0 draws (with the major recent exception being the 4-0 they suffered against Manchester United). Today, playing very defensively, they succeeded on stoping all City's attempts... including a penalty shot by Erling Haaland.
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Jordan Pickford, Everton keeper, made good use of his cheat sheet he has written around his bottle saying how do penalty shooters usually shoot, a tactic he also used during UEFA Euro 2024, where Pickford stopped a penalty by Manuel Akanji. Haaland headed the rebound, but he was offside.
Although he has scored 13 goals so far on Premier League, second only to Salah (15), Haaland has only scored three in his latest 12 games.
Manchester City needs to focus on surviving on Champions League this year... and the next
After this draw, Manchester City has only won one out of their last 13 games across all competitions. They have almost no chances to fight for Premier League, and could even be left out of European competitions if they don't improve, falling out of the top five teams.
Manchester City's next game will be on Sunday, December 29. Probably right now for most Citzens, the day marked red on their calendars is January 22, when PSG welcomes Manchester City in Paris for a UEFA Champions League game where both teams are on the brink of elimination.