GettyImagesJoe Hart was at his best to deny Mario Gotze on numerous occasions

Jurgen Klopp doesn't do grooming quite like Roberto Mancini. He professes to dislike shaving and his hair is a relative bird's nest to the Italian's carefully groomed feathers, but when it comes to tactics and team shape, passing and moving, pace and accuracy he is an aesthete of the first order.

Klopp's tidy little scout pack arrived in the drizzle of Manchester, pitched their tent and tied City's danger men in well constructed knots. This is a Dortmund team of some considerable talent: the fizzing youthful exuberance of the likes of Gotze, Hummels and Reus, the swift give and go of Schmeltzer and Gundogan, the fiery resistance of Subotic and Blaszczykowski. They have hardly emerged from behind a black sequinned curtain of course; winning back to back Bundesliga titles and the German Cup takes a modicum of planning, concentration, talent and teamgeist. And boy did Dortmund display the whole repertoire on Wednesday evening.

Broad brushstrokes of genius come in various colours. Wednesday's bright yellow artist was the tiny Mario Gotze, a wonderfully lithe footballer, who lets the ball do the talking. Part of a young, meticulously organised side with plenty of pace going forward, Gotze wasted precious few passes, whilst his sky blue opponents were knocking balls left, right and - frequently - up in the air. There was never any respite, never a period where the home side dominated. They were neither given the opportunity, nor could they force the matter through their own ability and effort. Dortmund were just too good.

I have spoken of Mancini's recalcitrance. That marvellous stubborn streak that allows him, time and again, to do his own thing. At Fulham last weekend it paid high dividends. Here it nearly created an earthquake. Had City lost this match, which, given the amount of shots saved acrobatically by man of the match Joe Hart (18 last count), the path ahead would have taken on the dimensions of a Himalayan rock face.

That we survived this onslaught can be put down almost entirely to a goalkeeping performance by Joe Hart, which bore positive comparison with the fine history of Swift and Trautmann and Corrigan. Time after time waves of yellow shirts broke through the City ranks only to find Hart in the form of his life. Even beyond the 90th minute, with City limping home thanks to Balotelli's coolly dispatched penalty, Hart still had to find the energy and elasticity to pull off two more extraordinary saves from Lewandowski. A truly terrific performance from him that, sadly, was not duplicated in many other areas of the pitch.

It is a long time since City were outplayed to this degree on their own patch, a long time since a team arrived here with such a confident swagger and proceeded to cut through our lines like a knife through butter. Several points to ponder then:

- Although Nastasic has played well in the two Champions League games so far, is Lescott's absence having an adverse effect on Vincent Kompany? A loose, sloppy performance from him again this evening.

- Are we in danger of underestimating the worth of Gareth Barry to this City side? Rodwell, clearly nervous at the thought of this kind of outing, again found himself in the spotlight after his glaring error let in Reus for the opener. Shades of Southampton.

- How long will Mancini persevere with three at the back? Again he changed shape mid-game; again confusion reigned. If he is close to making it work, I am not at all sure Clichy should be part of a back three.

- If Mancini "knows the Problem", how close is he to solving it?

- If Dortmund play like this every week (they beat Monchengladbach 5-0 last weekend), how the hell do we exit this group at the pointy end?

If Napoli's dagger-like counters had taken us by surprise a year ago, they paled alongside this constant 90-minute Dortmund bombardment. We knew Group D was going to be tough and so it is proving. After a close fought battle with Real and a lucky point at Eastlands, City must stride into two games with Ajax and play for six points. Nothing else will do if we want to go into the home match with Real and what could be a critical finale in the cavernous Westfalenstadion on December 4 with qualification still a possibility. As the violin-loving Klopp might say, don't fiddle about with a winning formula...

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