Manchester City pay the penalty for lack of cutting edge against Tottenham

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Raheem Sterling should've earned Man City a penalty after Kyle Walker pushed him in the area

Arguably the biggest talking point was Andre Marriner and his assistant Andy Garratt's joint failure to award Manchester City a penalty in the 76th minute.

Kyle Walker's blatant push on Raheem Sterling should have resulted in a spot kick and a red card but even though the City striker was clearly knocked off balance, the fact that he did not go down and managed to toe-poke a shot at Hugo Lloris influenced the officials to wave play on.

A minute later Heung-min Son equalised.

But Tottenham had their own grievances. Mauricio Pochettino pointed out that Leroy Sane handled as he scored City's first goal.

And some might have felt the German youngster was lucky to escape a red card, let alone a yellow, when he stamped on Walker's foot in the first half, although the fact his eyes were following the ball influenced Marriner to feel it was not intentional.

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Leroy Sane was accused for handling as he went on to score City's opening goal against Spurs

Walker admitted his push was a desperate attempt to put Sterling off while Yaya Toure believes Sterling was too honest and should have gone down.

Toure said: "If you have a bit of experience like me, you'd maybe dive in that situation and that's maybe what you have to do.

"But if he'd dived everyone would have been saying, 'it's a dive'. He's too honest, he wants to do the right thing in these sort of games. If the lad's like that, you can't tell him he's wrong, if that's what he tries to do. When you see it, he can't miss from there, he was so close and after that Walker pushes him in the back.

"If the referee looks again he'll see something was very wrong. I'll go home and watch the highlights and I'll probably break the TV screen and be angry because we lost two points like that. We feel we've been robbed."

Former referee Howard Webb agreed that his decision to stay on his feet influenced the officials.

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Walker admits his push on Sterling was a desperate attempt to put him off

"If Sterling had gone down undoubtedly he would have got the penalty," said the man who officiated the 2010 World Cup final, who feels it was another incident that underlines the need for video technology to be introduced.

"But we have to be really careful about how we say this because we don't want to encourage players to dive or to cheat.

"What Andre needs to do is make the connection between how much of a push there is and how much impact that has on Sterling. But he'll watch that back and see it should have been a push, a penalty and a red card for Walker."

Spurs keeper Hugo Lloris believes Sterling did not go over simply because he was desperate to get the third goal that would have probably put the game beyond Spurs.

"They wanted to score the third goal, we needed the second and maybe it was fair play [by Sterling]," he said.

"He tried to keep his action, keep his feet and in the end I made a good decision to stay low in my goal because if I tried to go low at his feet he probably would have scored. It was a factor in the game."

But all the controversies could not paper over the deficiencies that are undermining City's season.

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Heung-min Son celebrates after scoring Spurs' equaliser at the Etihad

They were by far the better team but for all their attacking talent they lack a clinical touch in front of goal.

As soon as Dele Alli continued his scoring run by heading in Walker's cross, the alarm bells were ringing in the home team.

And it was almost inevitable that 67 seconds after the Sterling penalty incident, Spurs should rub salt into City's wounds with the equaliser.

Harry Kane was marginally offside as he flicked Christian Eriksen's pass on to Son who fired home.

Spurs scored from their only two attempts on target whereas City had numerous attempts but in the end their two goals were courtesy of uncharacteristic mistakes by Lloris, somewhat ironic when all the scrutiny had been on Claudio Bravo.

The Frenchman's embarrassment was eased by resilient Spurs digging out a point that he admits a few years ago they wouldn't have got.

"The first one I was a bit unlucky," he said. "The second one was my mistake. It's not the first time and it won't be the last time. I'm very honest with myself. I don't allow myself to make mistakes and will try to do better next time."

Man City (4-1-4-1): Bravo 6; Zabaleta 7, Otamendi 6, Kolarov 6, Clichy 6 (Stones 84, 5); Toure 7; Sterling 7 (Jesus 82, 7), De Bruyne 8, Silva 7 (Delph 90), Sane 7; Aguero 7. Booked: Kolarov, Otamendi. Goals: Sane 49, De Bruyne 54. Next up: Crystal Palace (a) Sat, FA Cup.

Tottenham (3-5-1-1): Lloris 4; Dier 6, Alderweireld 6 (Winks 64, 5), Wimmer 5 (Son 46, 7); Walker 7, Eriksen 5, Wanyama 6, Dembele 6 (Sissoko 78, 5, Rose 7; Alli 6; Kane 5. Booked: Wimmer, Wanyama, Alli, Dier. Goals: Alli, Son 77. Next up: Wycome (h), Sat, FA Cup.

Referee. A Marriner (West Mids).

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