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If you are going to play your reserve games away from your home ground then City have found a way of playing them as close as possible, just a few yards away across the car park outside the City of Manchester Stadium.
It's not so easy to get in though, the whole place was over stewarded to a ridiculous degree, and we were even warned as we entered the stadium because they hadn't segregated the fans.
The pitch looked in pristine condition, and I'm sure it was good to play on, but for spectators it doesn't represent the best place to watch football, some distance away from the play because of the running track and in seats hardly elevated.
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Tonight's line up was a mix of experience and youth, but between the warm up and kick off the back four became even younger. Stephen Foster had been named in the side, was out on the pitch warming up, but failed to start the game. That meant left back Dan Brown going into the centre with young central midfielder Alex-Ray Harvey, initially named as a substitute, filling in at left back.
It didn't seem to worry us so much and we started well enough. More than once we came close to taking the lead, whilst there were a couple of anxious moments at the other end where Brian Jensen was positioned in front of the shot put area.
There was some good work in midfield and in front of them Jay Rodriguez, playing alongside the vastly more experienced Ade Akinbiyi, was showing up particularly well. They were linking up well together. Jay it was who broke the deadlock. It all stemmed from a powerful shot from Alan Mahon that the keeper couldn't hold and Jay was first there to give us the lead.
That was the only goal of the first half, and we deserved our half time lead, but City came back at us early in the second half and eventually equalised as Jensen turned in an almost Michopoulosesque piece of goalkeeping. In a style we became so accustomed to when Nik the Greek was in goal, he just stood and watched as a shot went to his right, hit the inside of the post, and dropped in.
We weren't behind for too long and again Rodriguez played his part. This time the ball in from the right eventually reached Ade at the far post and he made no mistake with a simple header from point blank range. It was just about his last bit of action before being replaced by Rob Turner, and the young striker almost increased our lead with his first touch. The ball came to him quickly but he got a touch on it only for it to go agonisingly wide of goal.
City made substitutions, players coming on who Sven has probably only ever seen on video, and although there were a couple of anxious moments we were fully deserving of the victory. As City won one late corner we were treated to the stewards moving onto the running track, presumably worried about a possible pitch invasion. It's amazing what a coloured jacket does to some people.
That corner came to nothing, the final whistle blew, there was no pitch invasion and the stewards looked bored. As for the Clarets ,I have to say that the four youngsters in the back four all did extremely well, as did all of them, but the eye catching performance came from Jay up front. Working with the first team squad really looks to have made a difference, and having missed seeing him score his penalty at Wrexham it was good to see his dad there tonight to see him score and play so well.
It's back to earth next week, or should I say back to Accy, a week tomorrow when we play our first home game against Blackpool.
The teams tonight were;
Manchester City: Joe Clegg, Kieran Trippier, Ben Morris, Ben Mee, Scott Kay, Andrew Tuttle, Vladimir Weiss, Angelos Tsiaklis, Robert Mak, Ian Daly, Donal McDermott. Subs: Jack Redshaw, Gregory Hartley, Igor Paldan, Abdisalam Ibrahim, Aaron Carter.
Burnley: Brian Jensen, Dean Stott, Dan Brown, Thomas Bradley, Alex Ray-Harvey, Alex McDonald, John Spicer (Adam Kay), James O'Connor, Alan Mahon, Ade Akinbiyi (Rob Turner), Jay Rodriguez. Subs not used: Stef Ritchie, Wes Fletcher.