It’s that feeling of déjà vu again, that is for Man City striker Carlos Tevez. What must he have been thinking when sitting on the bench at Anfield on Saturday afternoon? Probably the same things that were going through his mind while on the bench for United so many times last season, with the added sense that if he wanted to sit on the bench he would have rather done it with the Premier League champions than with his new team. Mark Hughes didn’t give him the comforting thought that it was anything to do with his knee injury either:

You just have to make sure the player understands the thinking behind it, there will be games when my decisions will affect other players and I will always try and explain those reasons to the players and make them understand why they are not involved from the start. It is not as if I had to explain my thinking, he understood what the game plan was. He has had a little bit of a problem with his knee, he has been playing with a little discomfort but today it was tactical thing.

Of course there is a tactical consideration for every manager to take into account, especially if you are going away to play Liverpool at Anfield, a side determined for a victory after only one win in nine games. The first priority for Hughes it appears was to stop the opposition playing, negating the need for two strikers, with the obvious omission of Tevez due to his lack of height compared to Adebayor.

The game plan was we felt we had to restrict the influence of their midfield and their full backs from getting in higher positions and I felt it worked really well. Liverpool didn’t have their natural flow to the game and they didn’t get any momentum to their play

This is all well and good but the fact was, due to the lack of confidence that Liverpool had, there was never going to be any flow to their game, whether City played 4-5-1 or not. It smacks of negativity, which has led to so many draws for City at the start of the season. In fact, during the first half against Liverpool, City hardly had a shot on target of note, bar Gareth Barry’s tame header which Reina parried. The Merseysiders looked there for the taking in all respects, but City were restricted and hamstrung in their play by a tactical plan which did not fit the occasion.

There were times in the first half where City players had space to exploit, Liverpool were hampered by injury problems during the early part of the match, and it would have been the ideal time for City to take advantage. There was no response at all, no real desire to get forward, exploit the space and carve out chances, rigidly sticking to a game plan which gradually became irrelevant as the game wore on. If Tevez had actually started the match, the first half would have been far more troubling for Liverpool, they would have found Tevez in all of the awkward positions they wouldn’t have wanted him in. His pace and strength would have very troubling for the new defensive partnership of Skrtel and Kyrgiakos, neither would have been able to track the movement of the Argentinean Striker.

In reality though, it took Hughes until City went 1-0 down to react. A far more positive attitude was needed from the players, a lead which needed to be taken by the manager through tactical changes. No doubt after conceding, City went straight on the front foot pinning Liverpool back. The lack of confidence in the reds was evident, even with a lead, and City began to put pressure on the weak links in Liverpool defence. The introduction of Tevez definitely helped matters as Hughes was quick to point out after the match:

When we conceded, that was the time to introduce Carlos, it was always my intention to bring him on at some point in the game because of the impact Carlos can have from the bench. I thought he was excellent. He came on had a real impact, like I knew he would do, and got us into a winning position.

So it begs the question, why didn’t City start off the match like they did after conceding a goal? A more positive mind set may have led to a situation where we now have from 12 Premier League games. A 4-4-2 with Tevez at the heart of the game may have given Liverpool even more headaches. You could say that the impact of Tevez from the bench was the reason for the turnaround, but the facts plainly show that such impact is rare from the striker; he has only scored one goal in 22 Premier league substitute appearances. I believe there would have been many more passes such as those to Shaun Wright Phillips for Stephen Ireland’s goal if he had started the match.

The Liverpool game was a game for what might have been for City, if Hughes had believed in the expensively assembled squad more, a victory would have surely followed. After all, many of the players are expensive for a reason, they are good players capable of beating teams such as Liverpool’s on their day. Even away from home, despite City’s failings away from Eastlands in recent seasons. It is the sort of game City will need to win to get into the top four, and the sort of game Hughes needs to be more ambitious in if he wants to keep his job.