Manchester City proclaimed ‘#IT BEGINS’ last summer. This increasingly feels like the season that ‘IT’ didn’t quite get off the ground. If ‘IT’ alluded to all consuming frustration borne out of a repeated inability from City to put away sides in the Premier League’s upper reaches when bossing possession whilst conceding stupid goals, then ‘IT’ was spot on.
And so it came to pass for season 2016-17. City have now played within the current top five sides Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal and Liverpool home and away. The tale of the tape: P8, W1, D3, L4. A dreadful 18 points dropped from a possible 24. City were well on top in the majority of those games for long periods but they just could not kill the opposition off and the side’s game management was badly lacking. I am developing the theory that it is more of a mental than physical issue as we know these vastly experienced players CAN make things happen. Worryingly, this is the second consecutive season that the City squad have failed to land blows on title challenging sides. It simply isn’t good enough.
Perhaps the most galling aspect of the current Premier League situation is that The Blues, having secured four straight wins through February have since stumbled to three draws and a defeat and are flirting yet again with reducing themselves to an unseemly scrap for a fourth placed Champions League Qualifying Round finish. Not ideal at all with the club booked into a big tour of the USA this Summer. There is no guarantee that we will finish in the top four.
What worries me is that very often teams who face a late season FA Cup Semi-Final or Final tend to switch off or lose full focus. Based upon what we have seen defensively in the last two games at Arsenal and Chelsea, I am not at all convinced that Pep Guardiola will not allow that to happen. Some of our football going forward has been sensational but some of the players don’t appear to have the belief in themselves, nor the killer instinct required to be consistent winners. I remarked after the draw at Arsenal that City didn’t seem to want it enough and I could just as easily have been referring to our ridiculous home defeat to the rags this time last year…and Jose Mourinho’s ‘Inexplicables’ continually scrape points tucked in behind us. We really don’t want to be in the situation whereby we are going into our clash with them on the 27th April needing to win four days after our FA Cup Semi-Final date with Arsenal. But these are the breaks and this is the situation we have played ourselves into. Sure, we haven’t had the rub of the green, nor have pisspoor referees afforded us any favours, but you cannot legislate for the stupidity of Fernandinho’s penalty faux pas at Stamford Bridge.
We have got to put away Hull and Southampton now and hope that Arsenal and the rags continue to stumble behind us before a Wembley date that will ultimately decide whether or not what could best be described as an experimental season is deemed a success or not.
None of this was in the script when ‘IT’ began.
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