Shaelumstash
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 30 Apr 2009
- Messages
- 8,229
We should have enough quality to comfortably finish in the top 4. On paper with our squad you'd still fancy us to win the title. But unfortunately there are too many individuals that are playing way below their 'on paper' level and we have a manager with the unique ability to get less than the sum of the parts out of the team!
The difference in the past is when Yaya was going through a bad patch you knew he had enough at the business end of the season to fire in to gear and drag us through games. Unfortunately his bad patch now seems to be a terminal decline, and I can't see him clicking in to gear towards the end of the season, it's just not there anymore.
We're going to struggle to break teams down, Nasri and De Bruyne are out long term, Navas is out, Silva is out and seemingly struggling with a long term injury. God only knows how the manager is going to set us up at the weekend, Delph left wing again? Fernando as a box to box midfielder again? Yaya as an ineffective number 10 again? Who knows, but if there's one thing I'm confident of it's the manager not making any changes to suit the available players, he'll just stick with what he usually does, and rely on "trust".
The back 4 is all over the place but again I don't expect the manager to drill them in the week and manage an improvement.
On the positive side, Aguero can't stop scoring. If we can keep him fit, he's well capable of dragging us to the title with his goals. Kompany should be back soon, his ability and physicality will make a huge difference, but even more so his leadership and drive could have a galvanising effect on the whole team which is sorely lacking in natural leaders from the squad and staff.
I'm still cautiously optimistic we can win the title just because I believe our players are better than everyone else's. But it is going to take the players to switch on and do it for themselves. For some of them it will probably be their last chance to win the Premier League, so I hope they do it out of personal pride.