Džeko sinks Aris, Subbed off early vs. Fullham

February 27th, 2011 | by: Harun | Comments Off

Slightly belated, but I was away on business. On Thursday night, Edin Džeko scored two goals in five minutes to leave Aris on life support and all but ensure that Manchester City progressed to the Europa League round of 16. Having also tallied a goal and an assist earlier in the week against Notts County, the night silenced at least a few of the haters that had been piling up lately.

Džeko’s first goal against Aris stemmed from a defensive error; a Greek defender made a horrible mistake in trying to knock the ball back out of the 16-yard-box and instead left it at Džeko’s feet. Edin then slotted home a nice right-footed finish past the keeper.

The second goal, however, was all Džeko. He swept to the left of one defender, carved out just enough space and then sent in a low shot that similarly ended up in the back of the net. You can see this goal in the Youtube clip below, at least until the copyright Nazis remove it entirely.

Goal.com gave Edin an 8.5 and had the following to say:

The Bosnian started the game on fire and quickly put his side two goals ahead with two clinical finishes. In the seventh minute he capitalised on a mistake from Lazaridis and fired past Sifakis into the bottom corner. Five minutes later he had his second, a counter attack from Silva and Tevez released the striker and he fired left footed past the keeper from 12 yards. He could, and probably should, have had a third in the final minute of the half but he was unable to convert a one-on-one chance.

Unfortunately, Džeko did not do as well in today’s home match against Fullham and was ultimately substituted after the hour mark; in fact, both Goal.com and the Manchester Evening News gave him a 5.0. To me that’s just slightly harsh, since the biggest problem for both Edin and his team was City’s lack of a creative substitute for David Silva. Carlos Tévez took the Spaniard’s place behind the center-forward and he did absolutely nothing with it in the first half.

When Roberto Mancini took Džeko off for Patrick Viera, he was trying to fix precisely this problem, placing Viera in the pivot and moving Yaya Touré up into an attacking midfield role. Unfortunately, no matter what he says, Yaya Touré is not really an attacking midfielder, and City’s poor display for the rest of the game simply affirmed how badly they’re missing some more creativity in their squad. Džeko certainly had a quiet game, but if Aleksandar Kolarov simply did the obvious and sent in that obvious low cross in the first half, our international would almost certainly have scored a tap-in to make it 2-0 and you wouldn’t be reading this paragraph.