The English Premier League had one of those important matches come up early in the season as table toppers Chelsea went to the Etihad Stadium to face defending champions Man City who are currently 5 points behind them.
Man city needed to redeem themselves after the defeat handed to them by Bayern Munich in Wednesday’s Champions League fixture and need a victory to keep up the chase with the leaders .
Chelsea however had greater odds of winning the match with 4 straight wins and 15 goals scored already.
Diego Costa started as Mourinho had earlier promised, he was matched up with Sergio Aguero and Yaya Toure who vowed to impress.
Eliaquim Mangala made his debut for Man City after arriving from Porto for 32 million-pound.
Two attempts from Aguero would have handed City an early lead but the Blues were able to put them off.
Man City kept the pressure on, earned most of the possession but Chelsea were a balanced side and were able to handle whatever was dished by the defending champions.
It was indeed a tough one for both side.
Yaya Toure (Man City), David Silva (Manchester City), Nemanja Matic (Chelsea), Pablo Zabaleta (Manchester City), Ramires (Chelsea) and Fernandinho (Manchester City) were all shown yellow cards in the course of the game.
After a very exhaustive 45 minutes plus 5 minutes (added time) of tough football the first half finally came to an end.
Luck was not on the side of the host as they failed to convert up to 9 corner-kicks in the first half.
The second half kicked-off with two corner-kicks awarded to City, shortly afterwards, Aguero’s left footed shot from outside the box was saved in the center of goal.
The clash continued with both sides taking all chances at scoring while being carefull not to concede a goal.
Attempts were continually blocked until the 71 minute when André Schürrle’s (Chelsea) ,who came in for Ramires, left footed shot from very close range beat Goal keeper Joe Hart to the bottom left corner of the net following a red card shown to Pablo Zabaleta.
Andre’s goal was quite overwhelming but Man City didn’t give up the struggle, they almost scored an equaliser with a through ball from Yaya Toure to Aguero but it was ruled offside.
Diego Chelsea almost sealed the victory for Chelsea in the 81 minute but hit the right post with a left footed shot from the centre of the box.
City continued to dominate and later leveled the score when Former Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard ,who came in for Kolarov, found the bottom left corner of Chelsea’s net in the 85th minute.
Lampard tried another shot in dying minutes but scuffed the chance.
The match ended 1 – 1, ending Chelsea’s 100 percent record.
Chelsea are still on top of the EPL table with 13 points followed by Southampton, Aston Villa and Arsenal standing at 10, 10, and 9 points respectively.
Manchester City are now 6th on the table with 8 points.