da betobet： And so the last English team in the Champions League has crashed out. Manchester City’s exit from this year’s competition may have been thoroughly expected after the first-leg defeat, but what isn’t expected is that they might not even get the chance to even compete in it next season.
da dobrowin： City have been pretty awful for most of the season, to be honest. They had a wonderful run of form in November and December – or should I say, Aguero had a wonderful run of form in November and December – and drew level with Chelsea on New Year’s day, but other than that, the season has been very flat. They’ve looked even flatter than usual over the last few weeks, and they look like a team still suffering from a league-winning hangover.
This has been a season of false dawns for Manuel Pellegrini’s men. They hammered Newcastle at the Etihad only a few days before being humbled at the same venue by Barcelona. They have spent the season looking like they might get going, before petering out disappointingly.
City are a team who can count among their ranks three players they can rely upon to help them out of trouble. With all three either injured or under-performing, City have never looked as convincing as they did at times last year.
Aguero picked up an injury after his spell of wonderful form, but he hasn’t shone as brightly since returning to the starting lineup.
Another one who has looked sluggish since his injury is the other talismanic figure in the squad. So often ‘captain fantastic’, Vincent Kompany has been the hero-turned-villain of recent weeks with some poor mistakes and was recently dropped in the win over Leicester.
Completing the trinity of ‘talismen’ is Yaya Toure. The Ivorian had a very slow start to the season and has been widely criticised for his work rate and failure to track back – something he was criticised for last year too. He was definitely a loss to City during his trip to the Africa Cup of Nations in January, but he certainly hasn’t been his usual self this season.
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These injuries and losses of form are the price you pay when you win a title. The season is long and you have to work hard. But once you win, you can’t expect to keep fighting at the same level again straight away the next season – not unless you bring in new players who can share the load.
This season is starting to look eerily similar to the failure of 2012-13 all over again.
That season, City were just as sluggish as they are this time around. That season, we were all waiting for City to start their season in earnest, get a run of wins together and mount a challenge. We waited for nearly a whole season thinking that City would put together a run of wins akin to those they went on in 2011-12.
That season, though, Mancini’s City couldn’t put together a run, and the Italian was sacked with two games still to go. That season, City were suffering from a hangover too.
They say that retaining the title is harder than winning it for the first time. Manchester United and Chelsea are the only teams to have done it in the Premier League era. And the summer after winning it is the most important.
When City won their first title, they went out and signed Scott Sinclair, Javi Garcia and Jack Rodwell the following summer. They failed in their bid to sign Robin Van Persie, and that’s the moment that United all but guaranteed the title. Those three City signings I mentioned are playing their football elsewhere now, and it’s no surprise; they were not of the quality needed to strengthen a league-winning squad.
The next summer, Pellegrini strengthened much more impressively, adding Fernandinho, Navas and Negredo – even if they aren’t City’s best players right now, they are better than what they had before. Negredo, for example, lasted only one season, but he did still manage to chip in with 23 goals. That year, City lifted the Premier League trophy again come May.
But this summer they seem to have got it wrong again. Bacary Sagna hasn’t played much (though he does provide cover for Zabaleta), and Fernando and Eliaquim Mangala have been disappointing – though Mangala is perhaps still ‘one for the future’.
Even if these players aren’t to be regarded flops in the same manner as Rodwell and Sinclair, they certainly don’t strengthen City’s team to the extent that Navas and Fernandinho did last summer – or Aguero, Clichy and Nasri did in the summer before City won their first title.
Granted, this time City were constrained by Financial Fair Play regulations, but they didn’t manage to add enough to the squad. They haven’t added anything to take some of the pressure and workload off the players who worked so hard to win the league title last season. There’s a limit to how long you can keep pushing at such a high level, and in order to retain the title, you need new players who can help out the ones who’ve already been pushing for a full season.
City’s talismans are tired, they’ve been fighting at a high level for so long and are feeling the effects now. Whether Pellegrini gets the blame – and the chop – for this, only time will tell.
But for now City need to put in one last effort until the end of the season, not just to try and challenge Chelsea but to hold off the challenge from a rampant pack behind them too. City may have had ambitions to retain the title and go far in the Champions League, now they just need to fight tooth and nail to make sure they even get a spot at Europe’s top table next season.
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