THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS……………
Its been an eventful week for City, some ups and downs, but a real sense of a team developing is what I feel after that week. Mistakes yes, frustration yes, but at the end of it all I see a group of players who are together with the manager in trying to do their best in all the games they play.
HULL AWAY
I want to start with the Hull game today as I thought, like many that this was a potential banana skin for City, add too this the anxiety of Kompany being (wrongly in my view) sent off and you can understand why my blood was boiling a tad after 10 minutes. The team dug in, we didn’t panic, we didn’t change the whole team, Pellegrini made some positional changes and we carried on.
I have to say that David Silva’s goal was breathtaking, ads was his all round contribution today, he’s tried hard all season but he was back to his best today and on Wednesday in Barcelona. We where able to hold onto the ball and very skilfully move it around the pitch, allowing the defence to regroup and make sure they stood firm.
A number of the unsung (and much maligned) players stood up for City today and that was a very pleasing element of the game, with Martin Demichelis and Javi Garcia both having good games under trying conditions. Well done lads.
The 3 points today is a welcome reminder to the press and to the “gobby” chelsea manager that City are still a force and can get the job done when required to do so, this takes the pressure off the manager and players and gives us a week without the City “bottle it” tag that could have been brought out had we lost 3 games in a row in 3 different competitions. I was really impressed with the Dzeko post match interview where is spoke for, what seemed like the whole team, when he praised Vincent Kompany, and called him the leader and heart of the team.
BARCELONA AWAY
Apart from being a cracking european trip I felt that City showed that they are a coming force in the Champions League and with a bit more poise in front of goal and luck with decisions we could have got a very different result in Catalunya.
I have to say I love Barcelona as a place, it has such a lot to offer the tourist both on short and longer breaks. I’ve been to the stadium before on an organised trip but was massively disappointed with the facilities and treatment for the travelling support.
With the fencing around the supporters it felt very much like the 1980’s again, but worst of all was the shoving state of the away section, its lack of modern facilities and its sheer lack of safety for the fans who sit in that part of the ground.
We where herded into the seats, not allowed drinks in the seats, and forced down the concourse and down one set of stairs at the bend of the game despite there being other stair wells, but these all has huge iron gates and padlocks across them. For such a big club you have such a lack of respect for the travelling fans, its shocking.
Its taking a long time to get used to european football from a spectators prospective as i’m convinced that its turned into a noon contact sport, unless of course that contact is committed by one of the “bigger” european teams, when its allowed and the opposition get booked for legitimately questioning the decisions. Enough already.
Suffice to say I thought City did well enough for me to be optimistic about the future in the CL, with a few descent signings, particularly in the defence and we will be a force to be reckoned with.
WIGAN AT HOME
In one way this game is the one of the last 3 that is the most disappointing, but interesting the most revealing, in my view. I say this purely from the perspective of who I think is good enough to play for City long term and who is not. Hindsight is a wonderful talent but I for one was happy that the starting 11 was good enough, on paper, to beat Wigan, but of course games aren’t played on paper and shit happens that is not supposed to, in my mind that is.
For me it told me that Micah Richards has gone backwards this last season, and he doesn’t fit into the pass and move approach that Pellegrini wants the team to adopt. He didn’t even show his usual barnstorming runs up the wing, instead choosing to get in the way of Navas instead.
I love Jolean Lescott and he will always be a legend for his part of the title winning team, but he again doesn’t fit into the style of play that we are going with under Pellegrini, I’ve not doubts about his defensive capabilities but he also has to play football and this he sometimes struggles with. If he leaves at the end of the season as its suggested that he will then I for one will be sad, but we need footballing defenders.
I like Demichelis, I just wish he was 5 years younger, and he would be that bit quicker and he would be ideal as a main partner for Vincent Kompany. I don’t buy into the notion that he has cost us any of the games, as this is a team sport and all the players make some mistakes, his just seem to be being highlighted more than other players. He is a good squad player and in games like Hull he showed he can still do a job, he’s just not the long term future in our back four.
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS
We have some tough games over the coming few weeks and I think our season will rest on the games at Arsenal and Liverpool, where they will both be looking to take points off City in their quest for a Top 4 finish. I think that the players will realise now that they have to battle for the points, they have to be courageous, work hard and not allow any form of complacency to get into the game. We have some hard fixtures against teams who are fighting for their own survival and these can be hard games unless we focus and have the right attitude going into each game.
We also need the strikers to (a) get fit and (b) to start scoring again, and this is clearly a worry for Pellegrini who hinted as such in his pre match interview with BT Sport (Michael Owen you are the wankyiest summariser ever) where he answered the question about the back four by saying he was more concerned with why we had stopped scoring lots of goals.
I’m clinging onto the notion that we are now concentrating on the League but we will have to start to deal with playing catchup in the league as well as playing a lot of games, if we are to challenge on all fronts in seasons to come.
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