Comments on a curtain raiser

The new season is finally upon us and we couldn't have a more taxing start to the season than making the journey south to White Hart Lane.

As a preview to the opening day fixture against Arry's men, Without a Dream in Our Hearts agreed to be interviewed by Ryan over at Can't Smile Without You, an excellent and informative Spurs blog.

Click here to read the interview and also here to hear Ryan's thoughts on an intriguing curtain raiser.

Lets hope Mancini and lads can evoke the spirit of 2004 on Saturday with a performance full of belief and determination!

The new aggression

Last season was a season of many firsts – both on and off the pitch. Away from the field of play there appears to have been a great deal of work done on the club’s image and marketing strategy. Even if we are not quite there on the pitch, off it the club has adopted an aggressive, winning mentality that I think puts us ahead of the majority of other clubs worldwide.

Aesthetically speaking

Everyone can see that the club has gone through a major cosmetic overhaul. This is perhaps most stark in the kit department. Last season, fans were finally rewarded with three fantastic kits to wear, easily the best in the Premier League, and probably the club’s best kits since the 1960s. The home strip was the real statement, with the club going for the maxim ‘less equals more’. Simplicity was the key word here, with the kit being kept very basic, all light blue with a white round neck. A return to Umbro as our kit sponsor has proved a fantastic move, with the partnership producing some top class training gear.

City’s online presence has been wholly revamped for the better. The website now looks very slick, with plenty of video content, plenty of interviews with top players, and new downloads. More creativity went into selling match days last season too. The Big Four Campaign (referred to in greater detail later) was a massive part of this, but also smaller touches, such as turning the stadium lights off just before kick off at night games, and projecting shining blue moons on the stadium screen – this kind of thing contributed much to the atmosphere of the games.

Customer relations

The club’s relationship with its fans has also improved. There has been some setbacks along the way to be sure (seat relocations come to mind), but overall the club is connecting with its fans in new ways.

A great example of this has been the worldwide web. There are a dedicated group of City bloggers out there who follow and report on developments at the club religiously. City have made strong links here, inviting bloggers to Eastlands to test the new website, inviting bloggers to write for the match day programme, placing links to each blog on the fan sections of the official website. These are all nice touches of recognition to City’s online community.

The club is also listening to its fans. The front page of the City website always contains a quote from fan blog or the club’s official Facebook page on recent developments. That the club actually took the design of its kits back to an old school style is – I think – further evidence of a club that wants to pander to its fans interests.

Focusing aggression locally

In a broad marketing sense, all of these moves have been aggressive. Improvements to the club’s image, improvements to how the club deals with its customers are all designed to pull in more money through keeping existing customers on board, attracting new customers and making sure all customers stay loyal.

But’s there’s another side to being aggressive, and that is competing with your rivals – in this context other clubs. And locally, we all know who that is.

At the beginning of last season, the new aggression was focussed specifically in and around Manchester. Its messages: the Blue half of Manchester is resurgent, belligerent, controversial and is the new kid on the block. Of course this took shape with the now infamous Tevez ‘Welcome to Manchester’ poster, slap bang in the City centre for all to see. The poster certainly put the cat amongst Ferguson’s pigeons, and it did so because it was a master stroke. The significance of the Tevez move could not be overstated, a top class player, a 20 goal a season man making the switch from United to City in his prime. How that must’ve rankled the red half of the city.

Then throughout the season came the creative Big Four campaign. This was a campaign that reared its head every time City played one of the traditional big four clubs (Arsenal, United, Chelsea, Liverpool) at home. The key message was that the club wanted to “celebrate those cult players who relish [big four] occasions and transcend the barriers between culture and football.” The key objective was to put “Manchester City at the centre of the cultural fabric of Manchester.”

With Arsenal’s highly charged visit in September, the club chose Emmanuel Adebayor as its first poster boy. A huge graphic was rolled out on the floor of the Manchester Arndale shopping centre before the game, and on the day of the match, posters with the same graphic were littered all around the stadium.

In December came the visit of Chelsea and it was Shaun Wright-Phillips’ turn. Iconic images of the little winger dribbling with the ball were graffiti-ed near the East Stand reception. The image was 50 meters long and young fans were challenged to run the length of the artwork to beat SWP’s own time and win prizes. This artwork was also replicated up the side of the four story Printworks in the middle of the city.

In February the campaign was upped a notch again with the visit of Liverpool. This time, Craig Bellamy was the centre of attention. The Welshman was the subject of an edgy video entitled ‘I give my all’, which featured a cinematic recording of Bellamy getting ready for a big match. A special piece of artwork was commissioned that signified Bellamy’s style of play: a snarling beast. All very unique stuff.

Finally, as the season came to a close with the visit of United, Carlos Tevez once again became the focus of the campaign. Clearly the club’s best player of last season, the Argentinean was the subject of another artistic design completed by the same people behind Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign. The new design, entitled ‘Tevez Pasion’, was very chic and iconic and is still available to download from the club’s website.

Whilst the campaign achieved its stated aims, I felt that it was about much more than just emphasising key players. Here was a campaign specifically directed toward the traditional hierarchy of English football through emphasising the links of current City players with their former clubs. Of course, there was plenty of room for needle here. It was clear that the Arsenal fans hated Adebayor before his reckless antics last year – pictures of his face around the stadium weren’t exactly designed to calm tempers. Bellamy the player is disliked by all except the club that he plays for, and the Tevez link with United needs no explanation. In short it was a campaign that sought to antagonise, challenge and a threat all rolled into one, with the message: ‘we are coming for you’ emblazoned on its forehead.

Channelling the aggression for 2010/11

Backed by this aggressive philosophy, off the field last season was a highly successful one. The real trick of course is keeping that aggression flowing and channelled in the right areas for the coming season. Key challenges lie first in the realm of aesthetics. How on earth can the club improve on last season’s kits? I have little idea and await the new designs with anticipation. I have always wanted the club to take a nod to its own history and produce a kit in the fashion of the old St Mark’s (West Gorton) black and white strip. The other key challenge is this: so far the new aggression has worked well locally, but how will this translate as the club continues to grow globally? Developing the new aggression for the global football market will have a massive bearing on whether the club increases its global appeal to rival the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United and AC Milan.

New blood and dead wood

Another transfer window in full flow, and once again we see the true colour of Sheikh Mansour’s intentions - and his money. New blood has already been injected into the club for the 2010/11 campaign, but the axe has also been ruthlessly wielded. Its clearer than ever that Mansour is going full steam ahead towards the target of winning the Premier League title. Whether he will achieve that feat is another matter, but he is certainly taking strides this summer.

Mansour’s gold buys Silva (and Yaya, and Jerome)
Within the space of a week the club signed the attacking midfielder/winger/striker David Silva from Valencia and defensive midfielder Yaya Toure from Barcelona. This is not to mention the earlier signing of German full-back/utility defender Jerome Boateng.

Of course all three signings are incredibly positive. Boateng is young, can play across the back four, and is already a full blown German international currently making his name in Joachim Loew’s surprise package team at the 2010 World Cup. The lad seems to have the right ingredients for the rigours of the Premier League – speed and strength – and given his European background will no doubt be handy for us as we mount our Europa League challenge.

Yaya Toure brings fantastic top level experience, and at 27 years old he comes to Eastlands at a good age. Once again we have added to our defensive midfield contingent: Barry, De Jong, Vieira, Kompany and now Yaya, but what is important is that we have added in a positive manner. Clearly this is a signing that will improve our midfield. It might even bring the best out of Barry by allowing us to rest the England midfielder a bit more. If we can hold onto Nigel De Jong though, I think it bodes for a formidable defensive midfield: steel, determination, aggression and now with Yaya, a bit more creativity and getting forward effectively too. But it is the signing of David Silva that heralds the most excitement and expectation. I must admit I thought we’d fall short in our efforts to secure this man’s services. Silva is one of those rare players that can drift between midfield and attack very effectively. Aside from his undoubted talent, which has perhaps been underlined more with the Spanish national team’s Euro 2008 victory rather than his exploits with previous club Valencia, what makes this signing extra sweet is that Silva was a target of Manchester United. Ferguson’s interest in the Spaniard has been well documented, but Silva rejected United’s overtures, saying that he wanted to play in Spain and would only move to Real Madrid or Barcelona. All the more surprising then, that Silva appears to have jettisoned this mindset to join City, and not United, Arsenal (perhaps the obvious choice), or Chelsea. Money has probably got something to do with it.

All three players have of course come for the money, but that is not the whole picture. For Yaya, the romanticism of finally playing in a club side with his brother Kolo must have also represented a strong gravitational pull towards Eastlands for the younger Ivorian. The other motivation of all three must be to play in the Premier League. Whilst I felt that the Premier League’s star waned somewhat last season, these signings show that it is still up there with the best Leagues in the world. That Silva and Yaya have both forfeited the chance of playing Champions League football with Valencia and Barcelona respectively throws more fire on the flames of that position.

Petrov, Sylvinho and Benjani jettisoned, Bojinov sold
Nothing irks me more than a player having a pop at an old club from the moment he has left. The words of Martin Petrov almost caused me to fall off my chair. The winger talked of City’s money and the club bringing in big stars. He went on to say that it doesn’t matter how much money you have if you can’t play as a team. He’s quite right of course, except to say that I don’t seem to remember Petrov being much of an overall team player when he was at Eastlands. An exciting winger yes, but I don’t recall him helping out his full back much.

I’m sorry Martin, but its sour grapes from you. Your real gripe is the fact that you didn’t play as much because we were bringing in better players. Injuries aside, you scored goals when you were in the team, but you couldn’t match Bellamy’s overall contribution to the team, and pretty soon you probably won’t be able to match Adam Johnson’s either. You are 31 years old, have injury prone knees, and were part of a club with a lot of money that wants to sign new talent and you were coming to the end of your contract. Martin – you did a great job for us under Sven and I wish you the best of luck at Bolton, but do us all a favour: stop moaning and get real.

The releasing of striker Benjani and full back Sylvinho also makes perfect sense. Benjani was never a real hit. Harry Redknapp definitely knew the right time to sell back in 2008. Of course, we will always thank Benjani for his winner against United at Old Trafford, but apart from that we didn’t get much return for the fee we paid Portsmouth. A terrible first touch will be my lasting memories of Benjani.

Sylvinho is another one that didn’t really work out. I don’t feel as if he ever got into the rhythm of the Premier League. His baptism of fire in League competition was away at Bolton, and what at baptism it was. We were defensively all over the place in that game, eventually drawing the match 3-3. Sylvinho I feel was more of a product of our new ‘big club’ relationship with Barcelona. I can’t ever see how he was a Hughes signing. Perhaps we signed Sylvinho to cure Robinho’s homesickness and instil a bit more discipline into the latter’s game? At any rate on the surface and in hindsight it feels like a worthless signing.

Finally, it is with a tint of regret that I see Valeri Bojinov appears to be leaving us to join Parma on a permanent basis. I always thought Bojinov was one of Sven’s better signings. He could have been great in the Premier League. Direct, powerful, a real bull heading up the attack. Injuring his cruciate ligaments against United in his first game meant that he never really got going. Once Mansour’s millions kicked in, there was always going to be limited chances for him at Eastlands now, but he deserves to be playing at a good club so I wish him the best of luck in Italy.

Once again, we return to that question
The big question come late August will be whether Roberto Mancini can forge these players into a team that wants to play for each other. The Italian missed out on 4^th and was rightly granted a reprieve, but he cannot afford any more big failures. In signing these players (and perhaps we aren’t done yet) the club hierarchy has once again delivered its part, now the coaching staff must deliver theirs. A bad start could see Mancini discarded much in the same way as Petrov et al.

Of course, there is another more haunting question at the back of my mind this summer: the prospect of Stephen Ireland moving to Manchester United. This is a story that refuses to go away. If the signing of David Silva had a catch, then this will surely be it. Thwarted in his pursuit of the Spaniard, Ferguson is rumoured to be focusing on signing Ireland. This is something that must not be allowed to happen. For one, the Irishman is an academy youth product. And for two, every City fan knows that Ferguson will only go and get the very best out of a player that has underachieved massively for the past season. That would surely be a spectre that would haunt us forever.

Hearts and minds

Many fans will have probably already found this little gem of a video, unusually narrated by City fans and academics alike. For those that haven't, its certainly worth a watch.

If you supported the club in the dark days of the mid to late 1990s, the memories will come flooding back. For the neutrals among us, its a facinating four minute journey into the hearts and minds of the City faithful.

Some of this footage is absolute quality. It says it all about the hardcore support of the club.

For my sins I was born and raised a City fan

My Dad stood and then I sat,
On the Kippax, in different years with different teams,
We watched shite defence and shite attack.
And then Lee and Ball ruined us.

It always went a bit like this:
Halftime, 2-0 up.
But there’s no belief, no relief from the question at the back of everyone’s mind.
How are we going to lose it this time?

Kinky came and went,
Another wad spent.
Another dent in the wallets of the fans.
Another comedic season sent up in smoke.
Late nineties devoid of skill and supporters devoid of hope.

From then on it was always the same.
Where do we look? Where do we turn?
It was Lee and Ball. They burned us.
Failed and failed and failed us.
Did more damage than a Red shirt could ever do.
Wrexham. Bournemouth. Division 2.

But it didn’t change a thing.
Next Saturday at Three o’clock we’d return.
Because we were the experts,
On the club, on our boys.

On the intricacies of our dire game.

We’d always return to point our fingers of blame.
And then the Arabs came…

Notes on a season

We have missed the chance of being able to compete with Europe’s best next season. For many fans this will represent failure, but the reality is found far from this assessment. If anything, we are still a club in transition, and this above all things we must remember as we look back on this season, in my opinion our second season of upheaval.

So let us look at the campaign in its entirety. Why have we ended up in fifth position? Why not fourth? And why does this year’s season look and feel like a bit of a failure?

When it really mattered, we lost
Let’s start with the last question, and in particular the disappointment of the Spurs game. It was a cup final, and yes it was a cup final I expected us to win. But on the night we fell short because we ran out of attacking ideas. It is never productive to point the finger at individuals, but I feel Emmanuel Adebayor was a key element of this loss. Adebayor started the season well but climaxed way too early during the home tie against Arsenal last September. Following his subsequent suspension, and then of course the horror of what happened to his Togoelse team mates in Angola, he never recovered this early form. And I can’t work out whose fault that is.

Against Spurs (as we have done pretty much all season with Ade), we kept on pumping long balls up to him. I might be walking around with my eyes closed, but I don’t recall ever seeing the 6’3” striker ever win a header. He always jumps at the wrong time, and ever when he is close to getting the ball, he doesn’t seem strong enough or willing enough to win the ball a redirect it to a team mate. His opposite number – Peter Crouch – had this off to a tea. This meant that Spurs were able to retain possession much more easily higher up the pitch, putting us under pressure. Our long balls just came straight back at us, which is part of the reason why we eventually ran out of legs and ideas.

We can look at Adebayor’s individual weakness and pin blame on them. But we also have to question the tactics. What are the players told in the dressing room? Surely it is obvious that Adebayor is not going to win headers and therefore obvious that we have to find different ways of getting up the pitch? If we’re going to knock it up to the front guys, then why not play a more traditional front man in the mould of Roque Santa-Cruz? I was confused by Mancini’s approach to this.

Another big reason why we lost to Spurs was lack of attacking threat from midfield. We started with De Jong and Barry, then substituted Barry with Vieira. A midfield with the defensive stamp of Mancini. With little central link from the midfield, it seemed to me Tevez and Adebayor were coming deeper to retrieve the ball, and then running it into wide positions. Whenever they were successful and crosses did come into the Spurs box, our attacking presence was halved, as one of our striker’s was doing the winger’s work.

In sum then, our attacking play was disjointed – full of endeavour but with no teeth. All very frustrating when you consider the wealth of attacking talent we have within the squad. So we lost against Spurs, and full credit must go to them for the way they secured fourth position. With all the money we’ve spent, no Champions League football is a kick in the teeth. If we’d have beaten Spurs I feel we would’ve secured that berth. It was literally that close and this is where the feeling of failure comes in.

The derby defeats
The heart ache doesn’t end there of course. We also lost in other pivotal games throughout the season. The 4-3 defeat at Old Trafford was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow. It was our first loss of the season, and an important loss I feel for the confidence of the squad. We fought unbelievably well in that game, and when Bellamy scored to make it 3-3 in the 90th minute, it certainly felt for one second that finally, after all these years, the scales were beginning to tip in our favour. We were becoming as mentally strong and ruthless as our neighbours. It was our turn to spoil the party and nip back into contention at the death. Owen’s 96th minute winner cruelly demonstrated that for now at least, we had to wait a little bit longer. That goal knocked us sideways and over the season I don’t think we fully mentally recovered from that blow.

This mental state was underlined when in the Carling Cup semi final Wayne Rooney scored in stoppage time to deny us our first trip to the new Wembley. I was at that game and I can tell you that it was quite simply horrific.

And neither did it end there. Last month at Eastlands, Paul Scholes decided a drab Derby affair by netting in the 93rd minute. This was absolutely soul destroying stuff for the average City fan. Personally I didn’t react as badly to this defeat as I did to the other two. Maybe I was inwardly half resigned to losing it anyway, given what had happened during the season.

We also feel as if we have failed this season because of these dramatic defeats and our inability to put one over on our rivals and draw real blood. We need to chalk up a League victory against Ferguson’s men quickly if we are to remove this inferiority complex.

The consecutive draws
Not long after our first defeat to United, we began to get in the habit of drawing games. The seven draws we chalked up in the months of October and November were key to us missing out on fourth. They were also key to the demise of Mark Hughes, sacked in December. Some were welcome and came against good sides such as Aston Villa and Liverpool, but too many of these draws were worrisome. The home draw against Fulham was where I saw the first signs. We had built a good 2-0 lead by the 60th minute, but by the 70th we had capitulated and allowed Hogdson’s men to draw level.

At the time I passed it off as an aberration, but I nevertheless sensed the smell of ‘typical City’ lurking in the atmosphere. At the next home game that sense was confirmed as we went 2-0 down to Burnley in 30 minutes. By the 60th minute we were 3-2 in front, but we capitulated yet again towards the end of the game and allowed Burnley to level the tie 3-3. We broke the duck with an excellent home win against Title-elect Chelsea, but a game later we were back to our drawing habits, allowing Bolton to put 3 past us at the Reebok. We gave as good as we got of course, and equalised every time Bolton took the lead. But it was clear to see that something was going wrong at the back. It was entertaining, high octane stuff going forward, but we were leaking goals badly at the back and the back of our minds everyone knew that this was not top four form.

Although we’d put a stop to the consecutive manner of our draws, you could see our confidence was knocked. We’d lost our steel, we weren’t the side we were at the beginning of the season. For the Mansour-Khaldoon-Cook axis, the final straw came with the 3-0 defeat to Spurs at White Hart Lane. This was (quite rightly as it turned out) a game billed as a battle between pretenders to the top four crown, and quite simply we failed spectacularly. I don’t remember us managing a chance all night as Spurs kept us at distance and picked us off. The billing of the game sealed Hughes’ dismissal. Whatever your opinion on Hughes, it confirmed to the owners that he didn’t have the mettle to lead this team into the top four.

The ingredients of our best ever Premier League finish
Having gone through all this dejection and despair, its clear that this is far from the whole picture. Although we failed on most of the big occasions, we certainly did a lot right. We would not have finished as high as 5th if this were not the case.

A lot went right offensively. Yes, Adebayor failed to fulfil his £25m price tag, but other players stepped up to the plate magnificently. Some, such as Carlos Tevez, were expected to. But others were not. Craig Bellamy has arguably just completed the best season of his career. Not many predicted the heights to which the Welshman would climb this year. A constant menace (both to opposing teams and – constructively – to his own team mates) it is difficult to see how we would have finished so high without Bellamy’s overall contribution.

But the largest accolade must go to a certain little Argentinean striker. After harbouring slight knocks at the beginning of the season, it took Carlos Tevez a little time to get into his stride. But when he did, he quickly became the attacking fulcrum of the side and the best player I have ever seen in a Blue shirt in all my years of watching City. The diminutive striker finished the season with 29 goals, 23 of them in the Premier League. In hindsight, it is this statistic that will most rankle United supporters this season. It is now clear beyond doubt that Ferguson made an error of judgement in letting Tevez leave. Perhaps this represents our best jibe at United this season – with Carlos Tevez in a Red shirt, they almost certainly would have won the League.

Our attack gave rise to some blistering results. It is to the attack’s credit that these reached their peak at the end of the season, with the back to back 6-1 and 5-1 demolitions of Burnley and Birmingham respectively coming to mind. But better results with more moderate score lines lay earlier on in the season. The opening day defeat of Blackburn Rovers was fundamental. Sam Allardyce and his men were the first to face the full brunt of Sheik Mansour’s millions. During the pre match build up they warned that City’s starlets would have a tough, physical ride. I think the term ‘kick lumps’ was used by one of the Blackburn players. And lets face it, a drubbing from Blackburn Rovers would have been an utter disaster on the opening day. Our season would have got off on the completely wrong footing and we’d have been the laughing stock of football, with Allardyce crowing in our ears. But these threats never materialised and the Blues efficiently despatched Rovers 2-0 at Ewood Park. Allardyce’s men seemed to heed this warning during the return fixture at Eastlands as I don’t remember any mind games being used here. But it didn’t matter. City were better than they were at Ewood and sent Blackburn packing 4-1.

The contribution of Adam Johnson should also be noted. Johnson, signed by Mancini but most probably identified by Brian Marwood, is a great English talent that will surely go on to do great things in football. Whilst formidable, his trickery on the wings has not always been there whilst he has been at City – most likely due to his lack of physical strength. But he has been a damn sight more consistent that Shaun Wright-Phillips, and this might well mean that the younger winger goes to South Africa in the place of SWP.

The defeats of Chelsea both home and away showed exactly what the side could achieve when it set its mind accordingly. In their decline, Liverpool were lucky to escape with two draws against us this season. We could have easily despatched them in both games if we’d have brought will and determination to the table. Things were looking very rosy indeed when, at the end of the season, we came from behind to defeat Aston Villa 3-1. The win was the first of a two game stint that we all knew would decide our Champions League future. We took the first step with flying colours, but as we all know by now, we failed to navigate the second.

The arrival, and subsequent backing of Roberto Mancini
The arrival of Roberto Mancini was a controversial development, not least because I feel the majority of fans – after they’d thought about it – actually didn’t want Hughes to go. Tempers were high and people were looking to point the blame at the club’s hierarchy. At first I thought Mancini looked a bit bewildered by it all. I remember his first press conference, when reported fired questions to him about whether he would be sacked if he did not reach fourth. The speed of Mancini’s arrival and the rumours of him being in the stadium to watch Hughes’ final game contributed to the feeling that the owners had plotted to plunge the sword in the Welshman’s back for some time. Then there were allegations from Hughes that the owners had unfairly moved the goalposts, now demanding a top four finish whereas at the start of the season they asked only for sixth. The mud was flying in all directions, but the majority of it stuck to Garry Cook. Hardly any seems to be still running down the faces of Khaldoon and Mansour. But they are the ones with money after all, so perhaps they deserve

After that initial press conference where Cook was took to task for supposedly unfairly raising the bar on Hughes’s performance, I soon became very impressed at the way Mancini acquitted himself. If anything, the Italian was the calming influence that we needed around the club.

The appointment of Mancini has seen our football make a trade off. Clearly more cautious, more defensive than Hughes, Mancini has shored us up at the back. But this has diminished our attacking threat – not fatally I must add – but it is nevertheless diminished. City’s tradition is to play progressive, attacking football, but to do that in today’s game and win (much like United do) you need better players at the club. This season we’ve not had those players and so Mancini has opted for defensive solidity over attacking risk, employing a much more defensive midfield in outlook. Tevez too, seems to expend a lot less energy now than he did under Hughes, where he seemed to pressurise defenders much more through chasing down the ball. I don’t know why this has changed, or who made that decision, but we all like it when Carlos is chasing down lost causes because we know that he’s likely to cause opposing teams problems employing this tactic.

The defensive solidity that Mancini has introduced has made us much more difficult to beat. We now concede less goals and I remember only being comprehensively beaten once under Mancini’s leadership – that being a 2-0 home defeat to Everton where Moyes’ team frustrated us all match, culminating in Mancini losing it on the touchline with Moyes. It’s also the only time I can remember the Italian losing it.

The backing of Mancini – even though he did not reach his target of delivering the club into the Champions League – is most welcome. I have written time and again on this blog of the club missing the ingredient of stability. In truth we’ve not had it since the early 1990s. Stability doesn’t just equal success, but the right personnel and stability certainly does. With the new financial backing, we have brought the right kind of personnel to the club – both in playing and managing terms. It is about time that someone finally backed that talent that we now have, and not only that, but remain fully committed to that talent when things don’t go according to plan. I honestly believe that this is the only way Manchester City will achieve sustained success in the years to come.

Looking forward
So its not really that bad after all is it? We’ve now a Europa League campaign to look forward to with a much better squad of players to attack it with. We must remember that we did well a couple of years back with a set of much lesser players. The Premier League also looms, but I think we are still a way off in terms of securing that title. After next season I think we will have a much better handle on where we are domestically. A lot depends of course upon the trajectory of other teams, but it also depends upon ourselves and the team spirit we forge at the club, which I feel has been lacking for the past year. A key area here is identifying our leaders, and specifically a club captain that can take us forward. At present I am not sure whether we have any of these. These things can only be developed over time, and it is for this reason that I expect the League to be beyond us for a couple of years yet.

A dour encounter gives rise to more twists and turns

On paper, yesterday’s trip to the Emirates was a potentially explosive showdown, with ourselves continuing to push for fourth and Arsenal looking to regain some face (and keep their own title aspirations mathematically alive) in the aftermath of their complete and utter capitulation at the hands of Wigan. In the end, both teams delivered a dour encounter, a day that, for me at least, was made slightly worthwhile due to the smattering of celebrities I saw attending the game.

Sven, Paul and Jeremy
After a few pints in the volatile Drayton Arms pub, opposite one of the corners of the ground, we made our way to our seats. Approaching the stadium, we soon found that we were walking behind none other than former City manager Sven Goran-Eriksson. The Swede, no doubt here to check on the form of City captain Kolo Toure, was mobbed by a small throng of City fans – myself included. Whilst Sven is far from being a legend at the Club (let’s face it he wasn’t given much chance to be a legend), its clear that he is still loved by some fans at Club, mostly likely because of the style of football we played under him and the exciting players he brought to the club.

Once inside, we saw who I consider to be a true legend of the club – Paul Lake. A player who could have given City and England so much more, a player whose career was cut short by injury. Lake was more than happy to pose for photographs with fans around him – for me this only reaffirms his legend status, given the amount of fans who must ask him to do this whenever he is in the public eye.

And then for good measure, coming out of the ground we saw former Rugby Union England international Jeremy Guscott. Not bad for a day visit to the capital!

The Emirates
Arsenal should be proud of their stadium, surely one of the finest in the world. I felt rather privileged to be sitting on padded seats – not bad a £33 a hit – although the reality was that, as usual, the away support never sat down and so never took full advantage of this luxury.

Although obviously on a bigger scale the Emirates reminds me very much of Eastlands in terms of how the highest seats of each stand slope up and down. Similarities with COMS do not end there. Both stadiums are not quite there in terms of atmosphere, although yesterday the flatness of the home support was probably down to the team’s performance and the fact that, whatever the result, they knew that they were out of the title race. The major difference between the two stadiums seemed to be what food they sell - will we ever see Salmon Bagels for £4.50 a go at Eastlands?

The game
On the pitch, it was another average performance from City where we never really got at our opponents. On the other side of the coin, they never really got at us. This was perhaps an example of when Mancini’s ‘safety first’ tactics served us well. Against United, one blip caused us to lose the game. Against Arsenal, there were no such blips and thus we came through at the Emirates unscathed. Everybody did their defensive jobs as Mancini opted to go with a defensive midfield in the form of Vieira, Barry and De Jong. Pablo Zabaleta, Wayne Bridge and (when he came on for the injured Bridge) Micah Richards did enough to deal with the likes of Walcott and Nasri. The worrying selection of Robin Van Persie never really presented the City backline with any serious problems.

Unfortunately we didn’t create very much at all at the other end. Adam Johnson faintly threatened on a couple of occasions but - as an Arsenal fan observed to me (in more colourful terms) coming away from the game - Bellamy and Tevez were ineffectual. And we all know what happens when our two lynchpins cannot affect the game: we either draw or lose.

This time we drew, and it was a much more valuable point for us than it was for the Gunners. That said, once again with the attacking talent at our disposal, I felt we should have been making more of a game of it against an Arsenal team with no Fabregas, Dennilson or Gallas. The arrival of Adebayor to the thunderous boos of the home support (incidentally the loudest they were during the entire game) upped our tempo a notch, but still we never really got close to causing Arsenal serious damage.

To add to our lacklustre performance, Shay Given dislocated his shoulder whilst saving a shot from Diaby and will now miss the rest of the season. He was replaced by Gunnar Nielsen, a player whom I knew absolutely nothing of but am now slightly more informed about – apparently he’s the first Faroe Islander to play in the Premier League. Stuart Taylor, the regular goalkeeping No.2 was out with knee surgery.

We must now ask ourselves, are we seriously ready for Champions League football?
When all is said and done, the last two results against United and Arsenal tell me that we are not yet ready to take fourth place. The frustrating thing is that I don’t think we turned up in either encounter, and let’s face it, we should be turning up and making a fight of it at this stage of the season.

We have thrown away a good momentum far too easily. The destruction of Burnley and Birmingham set us up nicely for the run in, but we never really gave ourselves the chance to win against the likes of United and Arsenal, and in so doing I feel we have dropped vital points and – most importantly have lost the momentum.

I have never wanted United to win as much as I did yesterday, and they did, so we must take the defeat of Spurs at Old Trafford as a positive, even if we failed to take full advantage of it. But still the narrative of the League issues us with more twists and turns. Today, after their 1-0 victory over Birmingham City, Aston Villa have somehow found a way back into the mix and now have as good a chance as Spurs and ourselves on making 4th position.

If we were to lose against Villa this coming Saturday, mathematically we would still be in the hunt for fourth, but speaking realistically, in our heads we will surely feel as if we have blown it. Anything less than victory will now not suffice as we enter a three game mini season that will have a major impact on the club’s trajectory over the next couple of years.