The ultimate victory

For those who want to understand the true meaning of the events at the Etihad Stadium last Sunday, read no further than the sub-title of this blog.

Sunday’s game was the perfect microcosm of what it is to support Manchester City, the new Champions of England.

The game is now days away, but for me and I should imagine most other City fans, the unbelievable high remains.

I’ve been writing this blog since 2009, I’ve been a City fan since the day I was born in 1981, but nothing, nothing can truly describe what happened on the turf of the Etihad last Sunday.

As the game drew to a close, and as the realization dawned that defeat was, unbelievably, after all that we had done, cruelly upon us, I found myself experiencing something particularly unpleasant.

For this was a new strain of Cityitis, the debilitating disease we had all hoped had been eradicated. Now, suddenly, unexplainably, from out of nowhere, it was back, and not only that – now it was stronger than ever before and with a new, particularly cruel and virulent twist. In the past, we had always been haunted from a position of weakness. Now we were being haunted on the edge of the glory. I could see the headlines being written as the game closed in, and all hope ebbed away.

But not this time.

Just when the chains of typical City threatened to pull us back into a dungeon of despair, this City team stood up and proved they had what it took to win the title.

By now, we all know the story. 2-1 down, the clocked ticked into injury time, with United still winning at Sunderland.

Everything we tried during that second half just didn’t come off. We tried intricate passes through the middle, crosses from both flanks, shots from distance.

To their credit QPR defended brilliantly. In many ways the game reminded me of a Barcelona-Chelsea Champions League semi-final in 2009 at the Nou Camp, where Chelsea invited the Catalans onto them and just flooded the penalty area with bodies, limiting Barca to very few clear cut chances.

That was the case here. We had a massive amount of possession, crosses, shots – but hardly any of it was incisive.

And so, by the 92^nd minute, we were staring down the barrel of a gun. Enter Edin Dzeko. A corner from David Silva, so often our man of the moment this season, found the head of the Bosnian who powered it down the centre of the goal past QPR keeper Paddy Kenny.

The darkness had descended, but now, somehow, from somewhere, a glimmer of hope had reappeared. Time was still against us, but I found myself thinking: Could it be?

Mancini, normally so collected on the touchline, was raging at his troops, urging them back to the restart. The pressure was white hot. It was unreal.

It was the last attack of the season. From the restart, we wrested back control of the ball from a QPR side that until now had been so stubborn, so resolute in their defence.

But they were cracking at the base. As often happens in games where one team goes for the jugular, and another team just defends, defends and defends, one goal was all it took. The Dzeko strike was crucial. Suddenly, as the Blues swept forward, with the last chance upon our shoulders, the gaps, the angles that we had sought so incessantly throughout the match, finally started to appear.

And commeth the minute, commeth the man. A string of City passes through the heart of the QPR defence found Sergio Aguero in the area. The Argentinean skipped the first tackle, composed himself, and fired the ball past Paddy Kenny into the back of the net.

We had won the Premier League. From the pits of despair we had come back. We were Champions, in the most unbelievable fashion imaginable. As one fan put it – this was Roy of the Rovers on speed.

We had stared down the barrel of the gun, but this time, as our world closed in on us, a millisecond before the trigger was about to be pulled, we ducked, swiveled the gun around and pulled the trigger ourselves.

This was escapology of the highest order.

From desperation, from frustration, from despair, to the heights of elation, the heights of ecstasy, to the heights of our history, in minutes. No Blue will ever forget Sunday 13^th May 2012.

Some teams torture their supporters but no-one is as sadistic as City. Thirteen years ago we were staring into the abyss in the old Division 3. Today we are champions. No. No team does it like quite like City, because City are City. And no team ever will. There is no story quite like that in modern football.

We deserved this title. Having defeated our closest rivals home and away, having played some of the best football the league has witnessed, this is our time. And this is City’s year.

It is too early to turn to next season. For now, Blues will enjoy the magnitude of what happened last Sunday. And no-one can begrudge them that.

They have suffered long enough. But now, the Blue Moon that has been rising since 2008 has well and truly risen. I can only applaud the club for how it has gone about achieving this most special of trophy wins.

As one fantastic chapter closes, another exciting chapter opens as this club – Manchester City, the champions of England – continues to go from strength to strength to strength.

Jakarta’s responsible ‘Mancunians’

Manchester, la, la, la! Manchester, la, la, la!

The famous Mancunian chant came not from the night of Manchester, but from the early morning of Jakarta, Indonesia.

It came not only from the throng of City fans, but also from an equally large group of United fans, both of whom had gathered in an outdoor café in the centre of the capital to watch what was billed as one of the biggest derbies ever.

The tension that reverberated throughout this match was there for all to see and feel. It rained down from the stands, onto the pitch and into our café through the big TV screen that was propped up by a tree.

Watching the game at 2:00 am in the morning was surreal enough, never mind that Jakarta’s streets and main thoroughfares, normally seething with the city’s 11 million vehicles, were eerily empty as we made our way to the café unimpeded. 


The stress normally felt by navigating your way through the traffic was gone, only to be replaced by something much worse, a feeling that many City fans know all too well - that very particular mix of both the dread and the hope of what is about to materialize as Derby day approaches. Times that by a thousand for this particular encounter, and then some.

We arrived at the venue and a black grill gate, swung open, revealed a makeshift and uneven car park – much akin to that outside the stadium formally known as Eastlands a couple of years ago - with rows of cars, vans and motorbikes piled in. On the left hand side of the enclosure was the café; big screen in the corner, marquee over the top to protect the electronics from an unexpected monsoon, red shirts on one side, blue shirts on the other. City vs United - in Jakarta.

Once inside the café, I was amazed at the pre-game build up. The chanting started, and for the large part it was spot on – and not a foreigner in sight apart from yours truly. The City fans sang “Hark though hear” and the United fans came back with “Glory, glory Man United”. “City till I die” was met with “We love United, we do!”

At half time, being the only bule (white man) in the crowd, I was asked if I wanted to join the City supporters club in Jakarta. For right of entry, I had to give the names of three City managers before Roberto Mancini. A Sven-Goran Eriksson, a Stuart Pearce and a Joe Royle later, and I'd been blooded, a membership card being temporarily given to me to confirm my membership (a ritual performed by all of Jakarta’s 500 City supporters club members, with the card was immediately given back to the organizer because there was only one in existence!).

With the Blue half of the crowd a little giddy given their team’s lead, the organizers of the event reminded everyone to be respectful of the opposing side’s fans. The request was observed almost perfectly, with nothing boiling over as the game’s tension grew higher and higher – a far cry from the antics of Mancini and Ferguson on the touchline of the Etihad.

I was mightly impressed with the restraint shown by both sets of supporters – how City fans didn’t bait their United counterparts I don’t know, and likewise how United fans didn’t let the frustration at their team’s performance boil over is beyond me.

It is a far cry from many drinking establishments in England, where for some the rivalry is too much, the prize too big, to resist mocking the opponent and therefore getting into a skirmish.

Indonesians love football, and don’t get me wrong - they are no strangers to football hooliganism. The Jakmania, which is the 100,000 strong supporters club of one of Jakarta’s teams Persija Jakarta – boasts unhealthy rivalries with Viking (supporters club attached to Persib Bandung – based in a city about three hours drive away) and Bonek (supporters club attached to Persebaya – based about 500 miles east of Jakarta).

However, there was something admirable about the way these Blue and Red Indonesians were managing supporter relations. With not a Munich chant in sight, I suddenly felt further than ever away from the hatred and the acidic atmosphere of Mary D’s.

Tevez: an apology of a footballer

A guest post by Murray Withers, which does a fine job of unpicking the complex tapestry that is the relationship between City and Carlos Tevez. You can also catch Murray on Twitter.

While there are transfer windows open in other countries, there is still hope we could sell Carlos Tévez. Maybe a loan to South America, maybe to Anzhi Makhachkala (not sure what the restos are like in Dagestan)? A loan to Liverpool was a weird call (especially when Carroll was being valued the same). The door to Italy is closed. PSG is a non-starter. Crawley? LA Galaxy? Now we hear he has been put in City’s Premier League squad for the rest of the season.

The situation as I understand it is this: Tévez, who is appealing the loss of his wages despite removing his labour through a lengthy and entirely self-imposed exile in Anywhere But Manchester, is ‘due’ to return to the club, maybe after Martin Palermo’s testimonial in Buenos Aires, or when he can be arsed in general. But Mancini would require an apology for him to resume with the first team, something his agent-parasite Kia Joorabchian has been adamant would not be forthcoming. The club back Mancini, don’t want to consider a loan and just want rid, but for the right price. The wider situation is that while City could do with someone of his graft and class, to bring Tévez back into the fold would be seen as a huge climb down and one that would be potentially destabilising for a squad who have bonded without him.

The Tévez fiasco is the highest profile casualty of City’s breakneck expansion since September 2008, and symptomatic of the modern abuses of player power, from someone who at one stage couldn’t even be owned by a club. Players are signed in good faith, and while it would be stupid to deny that the market-busting wages were the winning factor for some, especially in the first few seasons, you expect them to put in a shift. Much lower lights like Jerome Boateng floundered for this reason. Initially, that’s what we got from Tév, nearly two seasons’ worth of brilliance where El Apache would run through defensive walls to get us goals, nearly every game. For a while he was the fulcrum on which our game depended. Despite frequent grumbles about his unhappiness, he saw off £100m of talent in Robinho, Bellamy, Adebayor and Santa Cruz. A tw*t off the pitch, but a titan on it.

Yet there was always something unlovable about Carlito, shown by the fact that our main song about him was more about how he is no longer at our rivals. Sure, he’d ripped into Neville and co, but it was clear he was doing this for himself, not for the Blue cause. Then injury came, we beat United in the semi without him and realised he may not be indispensable. When Aguero was added to Balotelli and Dzeko all of a sudden he wasn’t automatic first choice and our play had changed. He started this season on the bench, from where the infamous refusal to warm up was played out in Munich. Since then Tévez’s star has sunk so low but this doesn’t seem to have bothered him. He thinks he just needs to turn up at a new club and get going again to be in the limelight for the right reasons. Maybe that’s true, but fans and clubs alike now know he’s only good for a few seasons and, like a child, only at his best when he sees himself as the biggest fish in the pond. If not, the sulks and the shrugs come with indecent and maddening regularity. Meanwhile on the Blue forums emotions still run high, with the general theme being that City should never consider bringing him back into the fold. This has gone way beyond the refusal to come to our rescue against Bayern.

The reality is that none of the more emotional stances of the stakeholders (club, manager, player and fans) are actually relevant to what is essentially an employer-employee dispute, the latter ruled by his ego and lack of nous. If Tévez were to return and start working hard at Carrington, the onus would then be on City to return him to the fold and if not we could be in the wrong contractually. We can’t run his contract down while he stagnates in training with the kids either. Like all workplace disputes, a bit of arbitration could put an end to the imbroglio. Put them all in a room with a player’s union rep, wrestle an apology from Tévez and a commitment from Mancini, and many of the problems could be solved.

That’s one scenario to deal with the situation as it currently stands, but the problem is that too much has been said, too much choppy water has flowed under the bridge, for the situation to be so easily recovered. And it’s not an outcome I’m in favour of. Tévez has not only been a disgrace to City but a disgrace to football and obviously the best solution is a sale at an acceptable price. Moreover, seeing him back in a sky blue shirt would provoke a further emotion. The one downside of us winning the cup was him lifting it, and as much as I could reluctantly accept Tévez helping us out the thought of this mercenary being anywhere near  our possible end-of-season celebrations makes me ill.

So I think unless the club budges on a loan deal what’s most likely to happen is a stalemate where Tevez is still tied to the club but essentially allowed to be AWOL (so we wouldn’t have to pay his wages) until the summer, when we finally get shot of him at a fraction of his value. I wish he was some other team’s problem now.

Thief or saviour?

The eternally combustible Mario Balotelli was centre stage yet again yesterday as City almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against a Spurs side that will feel that they were robbed.

No one at all will remember the first 45 minutes of football. City looked the more likely to score, with Sergio Aguero producing a good save from Spurs keeper Brad Freidel. But that was largely it, as both sides weighed each other up.

The second 45 minutes was a goal fest, as the tide swept (not ebbed) one way and then swept back the next, almost with disastrous consequences for the Blues.

Once again, it was the man of the season David Silva that first picked the lock, splitting open the Spurs defence with a pass of great vision to Samir Nasri, and the former Arsenal man’s shot flew into the back of the net, leaving Friedel no chance.

Three minutes later and City were two up, this time with a goal that was the polar opposite of the first. A great flick on from Edin Dzeko saw Joleon Lescott scramble the ball over the line.

Led by the impressive Aguero, who was probably City’s best player all afternoon, the Blues were cruising, but not for long.

I’ve written recently about giving younger players a chance as we experience our so-called resource crisis. Mancini once again placed his faith in Stefan Savic here, and once again the younger clearly was the weak link. A nervous defensive header back to Joe Hart did not have the power to reach the England number one, and Jermaine Defoe pounced, rounded Hart, and made it 2-1.

You had to take your hat off to Gareth Bale’s equalizer. The Welshman’s strike was a perfect combination of precision and power, as the ball looped over Hart’s head and into the back of the net. That goal made up for a shocker of a mis-kick earlier in the half, where Bale got his feet all wrong and ended up scuffing his shot in the box.

From here on in, you felt it was damage limitation for City.

Defoe gave Savic a torrid time. Spurs were looking increasingly lethal on the counter attack after that goal, and there were a few backline misunderstandings between Savic and Lescott. But the young Serbian is learning all the time, and I back Mancini’s decision to put him in the firing line.

The same cannot be said of Dzeko, who is hardly green, either to first team football or to the Premier League now. Aside from his fantastic flick to allow us to score the second, he seemed to get in the way and slow play down for us, with not much of an understanding with the fiery Aguero and quick-witted Silva. He looked the odd man out going forward.

At any rate the game boiled down to two late events. As the game came to a close, Spurs broke once again with intent. Defoe was whiskers away from winning the game, almost getting to Bale’s crossed, but City escaped, seemingly with the draw.

But yet another twist saw Balotelli, on for the substituted Dzeko, brought down in the area by Ledley King. The Italian slotted home the penalty and the win was ours.

Of course the controversy is now turning on whether Balotelli should have been on the pitch. Already booked for a challenge on Benoit Assou-Ekotto, the Italian challenged Scott Parker for the ball in what looked like a fair coming together. However, upon the replay you can see that the Italian, unexplainably, did stamp on Parker.

We should accept the incoming FA ban and get it over with, rather than appealing and incurring an extra game. He might well miss the Carling Cup Semi against Liverpool but we need him for the league.

At any rate, it was a remarkable victory by the Blues. We let Spurs back into the game, but we were seriously understrength whereas they pretty much were at full tilt. Still, the match turned away from Spurs.

At the end of the day we did what could to win, and we did. The omens are good. Maybe we didn’t deserve to win, but to do so in the manner we did just underlines the threat that we have now become.

But we can be our own worst enemy. The unpredictability of Mario Balotelli is the stuff of titles, but it is also the stuff of madness and the unexplainable. In him, we have a weapon that no other team possesses. Unfortunately, sometimes that weapon has a tendency of hurting the hand that controls it.

However, you do sense that it will be our own actions, and not the actions of others, that will either win or lose us this title.

The kids are alright, surely?

Vincent Kompany’s enforced absence from the side has increased calls for us to sign new players – particularly a defender – in the January transfer window. But do we really need to bring in new faces? And would it be prudent to bring in new faces given the incoming FIFA regulations?

It has not helped that the team appear to be going through an inevitable slump. If we’d have beaten Sunderland, United and Liverpool in the Carling Cup, I’m sure the call to sign more players would have been much quieter. But we lost those games, and naturally the manager and (some) fans alike are clamoring for new faces.

To be fair to Mancini, he called this situation a couple of months ago, citing that we would need reinforcements in January given the departure of the Toure brothers to the Africa Nations Cup. He must also have known that David Silva could not keep on performing to the level that he has. 

Also, managers will always be managers. Mancini lives and dies by what happens on the pitch, so it is only natural for him to push for new faces and maximize the impact we can have on the pitch. But I'm not sure whether the board will sanction any new additions in this window.

Kompany KO?

Whilst unfortunate, the Vincent Kompany situation is not the end of the world. Of course Kompany is a massive player for us, definitely one of the top three defenders in the world at the moment, but no-one is more important than the club.

The Belgian will miss four important games, no doubt about it. It will be very difficult for us now at Anfield, as we will certainly be put under the cosh there. The Spurs game also cries out for his presence – Redknapp’s men are as much a threat to our title ambitions as are United.

But at the end of the day, these are only four games. I am certain we can do without our captain – we proved as much in the second half against United.

Other options

We should balance the clamour of rushing into signing new players with a look at what we already have: Bridge, Kolarov, Clichy, Lescott, Savic, Onuoha, Richards and Zabaleta. At a pinch Barry and Milner can come back to fill in full back positions. That’s 10 potential options, without mentioning the untested Karim Rekik.

Of course, its 10 options in theory, but fans would argue the reality is leaner. Bridge and Onuoha appear to have been frozen out. Barry and Milner are emergency options. Playing them at the back would not just be playing them out of position but playing them in a different sector of pitch with different requirements.

But that still leaves us with seven options at the back, including the young Dutchman Rekik. Mancini has proved in the past that he is not averse to throwing in a youngster when it matters. He did so with Dedryck Boyata in the Carling Cup Semifinal second leg at Old Trafford a couple of years back. The Italian has hinted that he may turn to Rekik. I’m not sure whether that’s a ploy to alarm the owners or not.

In the end, this is the reason why we have a squad. Is this not the perfect opportunity to call on the likes of the EDS squad for a couple of substitute appearances? Isn’t football just as much about instilling confidence in younger players to go out and do the job as it is about identifying and signing established players?

In terms of resource issues, the same can be said of midfield, in fact perhaps here we have even less options on the table: Barry, Hargreaves, Johnson, de Jong, Milner and Nasri. Why not introduce the likes of Gai Assulin or Denis Suarez here?

If we know anything at all about Mancini, it is that he is a pragmatist. We have seen little of the likes of Rekik (17) Assulin (20) Suarez (18) and Savic (21 - although Savic has come right into the first team squad) probably because the Italian and his back room team do do feel these players are fully ready. 

Mancini placed Savic at the centre of our defence yesterday, directly replacing Kompany. As Savic gave away the penalty, and was probably the weak link at the back, this may well now lead to Mancini taking even fewer risks in the youth department. But where else will the likes of Savic learn other than as part of the first team? Sometimes I think you have to accept the mistakes of younger players to allow them to grow into solid performers.

Financial fair play

We’ve had it good for the last couple of years in terms of signing players, but we’re going to have to get used to not getting out the cheque book every time we hit an injury / suspension crisis, and now is the perfect time to do that.

By 2013 we will have had to curb our spending on transfer fees and, most importantly, wages. Placing our faith in young players is the key plank of this effort. The club has already acknowledged as much with its plans for the Etihad Campus.

Blooding younger players is a habit, and we have to get into the habit of doing it. We’ve brought these younger players to the club, so someone must have shown faith in them somewhere along the line. Why don’t we now throw some of this talent into the mix?

The strength of 10 men

It could have been a mauling, instead it turned into a cup tie and a half. City ultimately lost their FA Cup crown amidst a first half that was not good enough, whatever is said about the sending off of Vincent Kompany. United will gloat, but they will kick themselves that they did not push the sword in further.

The Blues started well, forcing their opponents back, but there was really nothing they could do against United’s opener, a top drawer header from Wayne Rooney, who seems to save some of his best performances for City.

We were down but far from out, and then came the sending off. The club will appeal the decision but I can’t help thinking there’s no point in doing that. The officials will close ranks and back Chris Foy, but really, there was nothing in the sending off at all, apart from a referee that appeared to be trying to make a name for himself.

With our captain and best defender off the pitch, we went to pieces at the back and United capitalized. We couldn’t clear the ball out of the area, and when we did, we couldn’t hold it long enough to give our defence a breather. It was classic United and there was no doubt that with a man less, it was going to be difficult.

United pressed and Wellbeck’s goal came as a result. I have to commend the strike, taken at an awkward angle and with perfect precision, the young striker showed great athleticism.

But the truth is, he was allowed to do this because we were soft in the area – in this case Nigel de Jong was the culprit. If you are de Jong in this situation, you have to be putting extreme pressure on the man, but instead, de Jong appeared to duck out of the challenge. It might have been out of fear of fouling Wellbeck, it might have been out of fear of deflecting the shot. Whatever it was, it gave the young United striker the window he needed to execute, and suddenly we were flapping.

There can be no qualms over Alexander Kolarov’s tackle on Wellbeck for the penalty. Costel Pantilimon did well to save Rooney’s penalty, but could do nothing with the rebound. It was a baptism of fire for our Romanian stand in keeper, a strange game to rest Joe Hart in.

But it was a credit to the Blues that Wellbeck’s second was the last United scored in open play. In the second half the ten men regrouped, got our heads right and Mancini got the tactics right. We were too belt and braces in the first half, even after we went behind. We needed to slow things down, have a bit of possession, wait for them to come at us, and then hit them. And that’s exactly what we did. Replacing Adam Johnson and David Silva with Pablo Zabaleta and Stefan Savic, we were much more able to repel United’s attacks.

It was the classic dilemma of playing against 10 ten. United were unsure what to do. Do you go for the fourth and kill the opposition off? Or do you wait and allow them to come onto you? The strength of ten men here cast doubt into United's overall play in the second half.

Ferguson helped us with his substitutes. Subbing Nani and Wellbeck took the edge of United’s offensive play. Introducing Paul Scholes particularly slowed things down for them, and as the game wore on, United surprisingly became less of a threat.

Kolarov’s sublime free kick was just was the doctor ordered, the first chance of the second half in the back of the net, start-as-you-mean-to-go-on stuff. Kolarov needs to start weighing in with a few more of these. We all know his defensive frailties – for me he still isn’t cut out for the position of left back in this league – but if he can bring goal scoring free kicks to the table then that weighs things out a bit more.

The game then changed. United continued to have possession but our counter attacking became more effective. Sergio Aguero was ploughing a lonely furrow for the majority of this encounter, but he did what all top strikers do and immediately switched on when he was needed. A brilliant cross from James Milner (who is probably having the season of his life) found Aguero unmarked in the box and the Argentinean scored City’s second, forcing the ball home after Lindegaard had parried his first effort.

Things were looking particularly dicey for United at this point. That is the central difference with Ferguson’s men this season. They are showing a brittleness at the back and throughout the spine of the team. Most sides are sensing blood and exploiting it, and that’s what we did here.

We on the other hand are showing steel, and our character came through.

As things became increasingly tense, too good penalty decisions were turned down. Kolarov brought down Valencia and then Phil Jones handballed inside the penalty area. On another day both could have easily been given.

A late, late Kolarov free kick, parried away by the United keeper in a penalty area full of players, could have gone anywhere. We threatened yet again with a corner, with Micah Richards attempting a scissor kick, but the ball could not be scrambled home. Instead, United scrambled away with a victory. It was a far cry from the thrashing they were surely expecting to give us. Nowadays, its a different City. It wasn't inconceivable that we could have won the game if some more decisions went our way - and all this with a man less.

There is something strange about United this season that I cannot quite put my finger on. There seems an air of capitulation about them, something rarely found in the Ferguson era. The script of this match started as a potential rout for United, but it ended with them on the back foot, exiting stage left as quickly as they could as they hung on while we ended the match heroically. Perhaps it is this inability to keep to the script that is now troubling Ferguson’s squad?

United will take the victory, but with 10 men, and a comeback that was almost United-esque in its manner, City will take the psychological edge.

The regista deficiency?

I hoped for a draw, we went for a win but in the end City were defeated by a Napoli team that has proved a thorn in our side during this Champions League group stage.

Looking back at the two encounters now, I still think we never quite worked out how to play against Walter Mazzarri’s unusual counter attacking side. The way we played showed our deficiencies, some I think that have been around for a while but others that have just recently come into view now that we have stepped up into the Champions League.

An excellent analysis of our defeat in Naples has been posted by the well read and always informative Zonal Marking. ZM draws out one of our newer weaknesses, in that we don’t appear to have a regista (a deep lying playmaker) within our ranks. ZM’s argument goes that if we’d have employed such a player against Neapolitans, he would have forced more of a change in Napoli’s rigid shape (which we found so difficult to get around) by drawing opposition midfield players towards him and therein leaving more space in front of the defence of our attacking players to exploit.

Naturally people look outward. Who can we sign? And whilst that may eventually turn out to be the case, it doesn’t mean that we can’t look within our current squad to see who could do play that role.

A look at our midfield and on the surface, it seems that ZM’s analysis has leverage. We all know what Nigel De Jong is about – he’s a destroyer of play, making the tackle and knocking the ball sideways to get our attacks moving again. I’ve heard a bit of criticism (unbelievably) come in for De Jong for allegedly being one dimensional, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better player of his type in the Premier League today. For me it’s no problem that De Jong is solely a defensive-minded player. There’s going to be times in Europe when we need someone to do his dirty work – we’ll certainly need him in the Premiership, and for me there is no-one better. But for the regista role, it’s a no-go.

Gareth Barry’s work rate is phenomenal but we all know he can’t fill this position. Barry  comes in for a lot of criticism – for England as well as for City – but it’s the ground he covers and the things he does without the ball that make a difference for us. Still, he’s not a regista.

It’s too early for David Silva to occupy this position. He does his damage as a trequartista for now, floating around between the oppositions defensive and midfield lines. Maybe later in his career he'll move back, a la Paul Scholes.

That leaves us with Yaya Toure and James Milner. It’s been well documented that the Englishman's preferential role is a central, creative one, but Milner is a player that people associate with industry and versatility. He is a balanced player – he can attack and defend to a good standard but I've not seen anything exceptional going forward. What is exceptional in Milner is his work rate and commitment. And he has improved quite a bit in his wide play. When we’ve really demolished teams this season, Milner has always seemed to play a significant role. He certainly has the defensive capacities attached to the regista role, but it remains to be seen whether or not he has the creative passes in his arsenal to become a regista.

That leaves us with Yaya Toure, probably the likeliest fit for the role in our current squad. Everyone knows the deep midfield role he played in Barcelona. Likewise everybody knows what he can do in advanced midfield – not in terms of performing the role of the trequarista – but in terms of being a much more direct attacking midfielder and powering forward, with the ball, towards opposition defences.

Yaya is a top quality box to box player. He also has that elusive element to his game – the pass from deep that cuts open the opposition defence. The best example I can think of was in the 5-1 demolition of Spurs earlier this season, where he set up the second goal with an exquisite pass from deep. Last season, everybody loved Yaya when he powered forward. This season he’s been playing a deeper role, but not necessarily less attacking. Some of his passes that have set off our counter attacks have regista written all over them.

Of course, Yaya, played against Napoli, so if he’s meant to be a regista, why wasn’t he effective? The answer is probably that Napoli were too good for us on the night. Playing just behind Milner, Yaya wasn’t creative enough. Perhaps also he wasn’t deep enough to qualify as a regista. Perhaps Napoli found Yaya easier to pick up because he was advanced, in the thick of the midfield battle rather than overseeing things from a deeper position.

Our other deficiencies came back to haunt us – pace in wide positions, both in an attacking and defensive sense. Napoli were lightning quick but Kolarov, whilst he does do a job, isn’t the fastest. Neither is Zabaleta, although Zab is defensively savvy and usually compensates for lack of pace with good positioning. Going forward, we didn’t do well enough on the wings. Balotelli and Silva aren’t wide players – we know that – but they are exceptional when they come inside. The only natural wide player we have left now is Adam Johnson, and everyone knows that Mancini has him coming inside.

We are probably out of the competition but you never know. Villareal are playing for nothing and might want to go out on a high note. First we must focus on dispatching Bayern Munich, one hell of a task. My feeling is that we will draw with Bayern in a frustrating 1-1 affair. The Germans will give us nothing.

If we do go out, I don’t think fans can complain with the way we have approached the Champions League. We’ve been positive on the whole, as we have in the Premier League. It’s the biggest sea change from last season. I don’t know whether Mancini has done it to appease the fans, whether Khaldoon and Mansour have had a word and said they wanted more bang for their bucks, or whether Mancini feels more emboldened now he has the players to be more progressive. But our style – the style that pundits slated us for last season – has really changed. Basically we’ve been more positive and we’ve got burned for doing it. We have to look at it as a learning curve, as irrational as that may sound given that so many of our players have CL experience.

Of course the disappointment will still be there, and the question mark will remain over Mancini’s record in the Europe’s top competition. Remember too that Napoli also qualified for the competition for the first time this season and now it looks like they are going to progress. If they do, the bottom line will be that they handled the step up better than us.

So, not an ideal situation for the Blues, but if fans want cheering up, they can always listen to the Napoli chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis.