Two days after English football giants Manchester City won the English League Cup, their captain Vincent Kompany provided a warning to their opponents in the Premier League, describing the current phase of the league as “hunting season”. Unfortunately, after limping to a goalless draw against Norwich City last Saturday, his club seems to have become the prey rather than the predator in a season that is rapidly unravelling for manager Manuel Pellegrini’s men.
So here we are: still dangling, or at least comically suspended in mid-air, because with eight match days to go in the Premier League title race, the question remains the same after many twists and turns: does anyone want to win the title? A thrilling race has now been narrowed down to a possible dogfight between Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur. Arsenal predictably committed suicide in slapstick fashion, while Manchester City have oscillated between utter brilliance and complete incompetence in a wayward season of flabbergasting proportions.
Out of the title race
City may have progressed to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday but were abject last week at Carrow Road, Norwich City’s home ground. Their performance was insipid against a team that had collected just one point from a possible 27 in recent weeks. City flopped in all departments.
A fortnight ago, Pellegrini’s team were pummeled 3-0 by Liverpool. “Boom,” commented Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp afterwards, but these recent results have been more than just a small shock on the Richter scale for Manchester City.
The club have now fallen 12 points behind leaders Leicester and are beyond title redemption. The match against Norwich was an apposite example of how City have gone from title favourites to also-rans: too many key players under-performed and displayed woeful away form, an uncanny propensity of the Citizens (as they are called) this season.
City were defeated both at Tottenham and Arsenal and scraped to a scoreless draw away to Leicester. Overall, they have mustered only three points out of 27 against the current top six in the league. Those are not the numbers of future champions.
Storm before the lull
City started the season brightly, storming to five consecutive wins, including an exhilarating 3-0 victory over Chelsea. They did not concede a single goal during that winning streak. But the next 24 fixtures have yielded just 36 points.
The cause of their decline is threefold: firstly, injuries have undermined coach Pellegrini’s squad with unfailing regularity – Belgian duo Kevin De Bruyne and Vincent Kompany were among the casualties, but City’s billion dollar wealth waivers any mitigating circumstances. There are simply no excuses for not assembling a decent enough squad and competing in the Premier League.
Secondly, City are overly reliant on star players, who have been underwhelming. The team demonstrates a distinct lack of leadership when captain Kompany is not playing. The decline of Ivorian midfield lynchpin Yaya Toure has been a painful procession and striker Sergio Aguero, by far the team’s best striker, has failed to perform consistently.
City’s squad is also aging. Only De Bruyne, a £55 million acquisition over the summer, and Raheem Sterling, another newbie, have injected some youthfulness into a group of players who exude neither motivation nor desire. City are on course for their lowest points tally since the 2008-09 season.
The imminent arrival of current Bayern Munich coach Pep Guardiola has overshadowed the denouement of Pellegrini’s City career. The Chilean coach delivered a league title in the 2013/14 season and has guided the club to their best-ever Champions League result (Manchester City had previously never reached the quarterfinals). But in the unforgiving world of Premier League coaches, Pellegrini’s Emirati bosses have cast him aside for Pep Guardiola. The Spaniard is self-conscious and sexy, everything Pellegrini is not.
After the home defeat against Leicester early in February, Pellegrini dismissed the notion that his outfit had slid owing to the Guardiola announcement. The Chilean has handled his own managerial defenestration with much grace and understatement, but his reign has, at best, become a protracted tragicomedy.
Since that Leicester game, City have won just a solitary game in the Premier League, definitely and dramatically ending any hopes of title success. They must now tolerate both West Ham United and Manchester United, their neighbors with similar structural issues under beleaguered coach Lous van Gaal, next to them – in an all-mighty scrap for fourth place and a ticket to next season’s Champions League. This weekend, City’s predicament may worsen in the Manchester derby as two faded glories seek a sense of absolution in torrid times.
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