Both managers came into this clash with tactics that were poised to give a great encounter. Hull boss Steve Bruce prepared to combat the usual threats from Manchester City and Manuel Pellegrini had made necessary adjustments for his misfiring forwards to keep his side going forward.
An unlikely early sending off changed a lot of those plans and the visitors coped better.
Hull have gone through the season with two options at the back. For this game they went with a back four instead of a possible back three as they knew that City would be direct with at least one of target strikers Eden Dzeko or Alvaro Negredo likely to be in the team.
They wanted to cut service from the wide areas, so they also included David Meyler and Ahmed Elmohamady; two solid wingers with pace who would also be able to help defensively by tracking back with Manchester City’s full backs.
Offensively they looked to the passing range of Tom Huddlestone to float diagonal balls into channels for Shane Long and Nikica Jelavic, the two centre forwards.
Martin Demichelis is well documented as Manchester City’s weak link so the quicker Long had to look for service around the Argentine and hopefully pass it on to Jelavic, the box man. The two new strikers have quickly developed a good understanding of each other.
Manuel Pellegrini had a hard decision to make by departing his favoured 4-4-2 formation. He needed to because his fit strikers have not been in goalscoring form. So he opted to play only Dzeko and add an extra midfielder.
Yaya Toure had two goals in his last four appearances, so he was pushed forward to play behind the Bosnia international.
Samir Nasri and David Silva had to rotate with Toure up front and try to find pockets of space to create and score. Fernandinho got the ball-playing role and Javi Garcia took the Brazilian’s usual holding place.
Demichelis partnered Vincent Kompany, despite many questions being raised about his performance. It’s clear that Pellegrini values his ability to play out more than he feels his erratic decision making detracts from the team.
Kompany was sent off just after 10 minutes in and the whole complexion of the game changed. Javi Garcia filled in at centre-back, Toure dropped to a box-to-box role and they reshuffled to a 4-1-3-1, with Fernandinho patrolling space ahead of his back four.
From that point on, both teams shared moments of attack until Silva scored a beautiful curler. City had something to protect so they generally dropped deep and picked moments to allow Toure, Silva, Nasri and both full-backs to supplement Dzeko in attack.
Hull struggled to use their man advantage as Gael Clichy and Pablo Zabaleta drifted in to form a narrow line, allowing the hosts to cross but trapping their forwards for offside.
The Tigers tried feeding their strikers with crosses, but they were slow to move the ball to wide areas and by the time they crossed the ball, City already had formed a line.
Manchester City were generally successful with their risky offside trap and Joe Hart barely had any uncomfortable moments.
In the 70th minute, Pellegrini chose to settle for the narrow win by introducing Lescott for Toure.
For the final 10 minutes, Bruce introduced Matty Fryatt and tried to use a 4-3-3 with Fryatt, Long and Jelavic up front but City still had a comfortable game.
Dzeko’s last minute strike sealed victory.
What Hull really needed was pace and quality in wide areas to beat full-backs and whip the ball in from the byline. That would have rendered the offside trap useless but Bruce didn’t have that in his squad.
City have were very impressive. From the moment Kompany got sent off, they kept their cool and reorganised.
