Manchester City got their 2024/25 Champions League campaign started last night with a home match against Inter Milan.
City welcomed the Italian side to the Etihad Stadium for their first meeting since the 2023 final in Istanbul which Pep Guardiola’s side won to secure their historic Treble.
After seeing Liverpool beat AC Milan 3-1 away from home on Tuesday, the Manchester club had to settle for a 0-0 draw against Inter on this occasion.
This then led to one pundit sharing his assessment of the match and what he saw from both sides.
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Chris Sutton shares verdict on Man City vs Inter Milan
After watching City’s stalemate against Inter, Chris Sutton had this to say about the match and the home side’s performance in a recent episode of BBC Sport’s Football Daily podcast.
He said: “Well, it’s not the Manchester City performance which we are normally accustomed to. They didn’t play with the zip and the slickness which they normally do, but I think a lot of credit has to go to Inter for the way that they played and defended.
“Look, I think when anybody rocks up to the Etihad, you think that Manchester City are going to dominate, but Inter had their game plan.
“It worked exceptionally well in the first half, and they set up well out of possession, but they’re very brave on the ball, and they’re a team who certainly know what they’re doing, and they could go deep into this competition. They’re very, very capable.
“Second half, City made the substitutions, had a couple of opportunities, but so did Inter.
“So look, in the end, I think a draw was about the right result, and both teams have work to do, but I think they’ll certainly be fairly comfortable in terms of qualifying automatically.
When asked about the late chances City had in the later stages of the game from Ilkay Gundogan and Phil Foden, Sutton said this before wrapping up his verdict on the game as a whole.
“I thought the last one was a little bit high for Gundogan. He couldn’t quite direct the header down. But yeah, they were chances they didn’t take.
“But overall, I think that anybody watching the game tonight would have thought that Inter definitely deserved something from it and City were not at the level which we normally expect.”
City will rue their missed chances against Inter
This result ended up being the first time City have dropped points at home in a Champions League group game in five years.
With 60% possession, City had 22 shots at goal in total, with five being on target. However, Inter registered four shots on target with 13 attempts at goal across the 90 minutes.
In terms of their overall performance, the home side earned themselves a solid team rating of 7.3/10 from SofaScore, which is higher than the 6.96/10 rating that Inter were given.
Despite that, the Blues will undoubtedly be feeling frustrated about their inability to put away any of the chances they had to get their latest Champions League campaign off to a strong start.
