Manchester City vs Chelsea: Frank Lampard shows no joy after denying Chelsea Victory

                          MANCHESTER CITY 1  CHELSEA 1

   In the pre-match briefing document prepared for his players on Manchester City's strengths and weaknesses,

Jose Mourinho will no doubt have noted the tendency of the opposition’s No 18 to make late runs into the penalty area and score important goals.

   After all, Frank Lampard has made a career out of doing just that: the problem, even at the age of 36, is stopping him doing it.

    His 85th-minute equaliser was the most dramatic twist in an afternoon that took its time coming to the boil but was well worth the wait. The equaliser was a genuine double-take moment. Having connected with James Milner’s cross and denied Chelsea victory, Lampard embarked upon the most mawkish, low-key goal celebrations in the history of players scoring goals against former clubs.

Forty years since Denis Law did the same for City against Manchester United, Lampard took that particular art to a new, even more understated level. For the travelling support who had sung Lampard’s name all afternoon, in defiance of any suggestion there is animosity, it was one of those moments they will find very hard to forget.

   The mood was very different on the City bench, where Manuel Pellegrini had sent Lampard on as a 78th-minute substitute for Aleksandar Kolarov with his team a goal down and reduced to 10 men following the red card for Pablo Zabaleta on 66 minutes. They had been beaten home and away last season in the league by Chelsea and another defeat for Pellegrini, always just a few degrees below boiling when it comes to facing Mourinho, would have been hard for him  to take.

   As ever this was a Mourinho performance somewhere on the spectrum between brilliance and cynicism, and when his substitute André Schürrle struck with less than 20 minutes left, he must have believed he could win.