Manchester City ease into FA Cup fifth round as Kevin De Bruyne and Raheem Sterling see off Cardiff

The great Manchester City machine rolls on. Pep Guardiola’s side showed up in Cardiff this afternoon, chasing a place in the fifth round of the FA Cup, facing as direct, physical and unwelcoming a side as they will face all season. Guardiola has achieved a fair bit in the game, but he has never come up against a Neil Warnock side before.

But under pressure and provocation from Cardiff, Manchester City stood up for themselves, imposed their football, took a 2-0 first half lead and never let go. This should have been a huge day for Cardiff, hosting the best team in the country, in front of a new club-record crowd of 32,339. But in truth their players could make no impression on the afternoon beyond their excessive tackling.

The worst of it was Joe Bennett, high, late, cynical and reckless on Leroy Sane at the end of the first half. That will put Sane out for a few weeks but Lee Mason generously allowed Bennett to stay on the pitch. Bennett made the most of it, clattered Brahim Diaz at the end and was belatedly sent off. Guardiola was furious, going onto the pitch afterwards to remonstrate with Mason and his team, and using his press conference to demand that officials protect players better. Guardiola knows that eventually one his men will have a leg or ankle broken, and it is only good fortune that means that has not happened yet.

But injury to Sane aside, this was all very straightforward for Manchester City. Far more so than Tottenham Hotspur’s outing down the road at Newport County yesterday evening, where they only equalised with eight minutes left. It was even more comfortable than Manchester City’s last trip to a Championship side, when they went to Bristol City on Tuesday night, won 3-2 on the night and confirmed their place in the EFL Cup final.

That is at the end of next month but before then, after City go to Switzerland to play FC Basel, City will have their FA Cup fifth round tie, which Guardiola desperately hopes will be at home. These simple wins do not all feel like big games yet but they are all crucial little steps towards the four trophies City are pursuing. They may well not win any of them, but as they turn into February they are still in the hunt.

With Guardiola, the evolution never stops and so Manchester City came to Cardiff with a new approach they had not used before this season: Bernardo Silva as a false nine. Guardiola knew that Cardiff would mark man-to-man so having Silva as an optional extra midfielder helped City to keep the ball, as well as dragging the Cardiff defenders out of place, giving them a new problem to solve.

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This meant the Cardiff defence had no idea who to pick up, which only made it harder when City’s runners arrived into the box. Like when, just five minutes in, Silva found Danilo, who crossed to Ilkay Gundogan, whose shot was saved by Neil Etheridge.

Faced with this whirr of purple shirts, Cardiff’s only response was to kick out. But that cost them when De Bruyne scored the first goal from a free-kick. Gundogan had been clattered by Joe Ralls on the edge of the box. After a lengthy stoppage, De Bruyne tapped the free-kick under the wall and into the bottom corner of the net.

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That was 1-0 and it was only some curious officiating that stopped Manchester City from doubling their lead soon after. De Bruyne found Silva who shuffled inside Ralls and hit an early shot into the near top corner of the net. Silva’s quick thinking was a surprise, but even more surprising was the flag disallowing it. Sane was ruled to have been both interfering in play and in an offside position. Neither of which was apparent on the replays.

Guardiola was incensed but soon enough City did have their second. This time Silva popped up on the left wing and he whipped in a perfect left-footed cross, over the head of Bruno Ecuele Manga. Sterling was perfectly there, contorting his body to head it down, into the ground and into the net, for his 19th goal of the season.

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That was City in the hat for the fifth round, more or less, but they could not relax from there. Sane was cut down by Bennett, and that meant Aguero, who started on the bench, had to come on for the second half. Manchester City were happy enough to pass the ball between themselves after that, especially with a tiring Cardiff side reluctant to press them too high up the pitch.

Cardiff never looked like getting seriously back into the game. They had barely threatened from the start, their main first half approach coming from long balls and second balls. Junior Hoillet had nearly scored from distance early on, when Claudio Bravo spilled the ball onto his own goal-line but not over it. Then, in the second half, Kenneth Zohore forced another save from Bravo and Hoillet fizzed one over from distance. That was as good as it got for a time who were starved out possession and not exactly bursting with ideas when they did get it.

It was Manchester City who looked more like scoring another, not that they needed to. Twice Sterling raced in behind the Cardiff defence but both times Sean Morrison made up enough ground to tackle him. Guardiola threw on Diaz at the very end, but when he was scythed down by Bennett, who was sent off, he might have regretted it. That sent Guardiola into a fury with the referee, as he argued Bennett should not have been on the pitch. City did not exactly leave unscathed, but they did leave as winners.