Will we win the league this season?

The league is all over the place at present, but one thing I can definitely say is that we're over the initial high of the 'Wolves' game.

Positives: We look good in every competition at least. Composed, threatening, not so much controlling but there are signs of a battling squad, just so long as we don't revert to how we were playing last season.

Negatives: Liverpool. Not that they're any good, far from it. They're an overhyped side with serious attitude problems. It's VAR. These constant last minute, where-did-that-come-from penalty decisions which has them leading the pack so far. Everyone I know talks about it. They will do whatever they can to make Liverpool champions again. In that scenario our form won't count for much.

We'll perform much better this season, but there's no title party whilst VAR and PiGMOL has Liverpool's back.
 
We have a real chance if Bobb, Savinho or Cherki click. The right hand side is not great at the moment. If we can produce an alternative 'prong' to Doku, then we will become very hard to stop.

The floodgates opened yesterday when Haaland set up Nunes but it was a little out of the blue. Burnley were defending reasonably comfortably because they could send 2-3 players out to shut down Doku. City become far more effective if we can switch play to another cutting edge. At the moment we have Foden, Doku and Haaland who are performing at a very high level but we could do with another supply line into Haaland. If we find that, we are in business.
 
blueste41 said:
Or we lost to 2 half decent teams and beat shit ones including a 10 man Napoli? Burnley, who are 17th, held their own against us for 60-70 minutes yesterday and the 5-1 flattered us. It reminds me of last seasons start where our results (8 wins and 2 draws) were papering over the cracks until mid October when we got just 1 win in 13.
Hope your right though.
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5-1 flattered us? Did you see the game or just read the BBC match report? Flattered, when we battered them second half and were unlucky to concede a deflected goal.........
 
Paleblue2 said:
5-1 flattered us? Did you see the game or just read the BBC match report? Flattered, when we battered them second half and were unlucky to concede a deflected goal.........
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It was 1-1 until 60 minutes and 2 of our goals were scored in injury time, dress it up anyway you want but 5-1 flattered us. I didn't say we didn't deserve to win because of course we did.
 
Marvin. said:
We have a real chance if Bobb, Savinho or Cherki click. The right hand side is not great at the moment. If we can produce an alternative 'prong' to Doku, then we will become very hard to stop.

The floodgates opened yesterday when Haaland set up Nunes but it was a little out of the blue. Burnley were defending reasonably comfortably because they could send 2-3 players out to shut down Doku. City become far more effective if we can switch play to another cutting edge. At the moment we have Foden, Doku and Haaland who are performing at a very high level but we could do with another supply line into Haaland. If we find that, we are in business.
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Bobb made a big difference when he came on. He is still recovering but if we can get him firing it will transform things.
 
bobbyowenquiff said:
Bobb made a big difference when he came on. He is still recovering but if we can get him firing it will transform things.
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He did but I can see that position being rotated until there is a player producing regular top performances, similar to Doku on the other wing.
We had a bit of lucky with the 2 og's and I would have preferred a little bit of that luck to be spread over a couple of matches.
The 2nd OG was a weird one. Bobb had missed the ball but I suppose he was in there to cause a bit of havoc.
 
Still think we are in a challenge for top 4 and not the title. We were lucky not to go 2-1 down early 2nd half yesterday and their defender was MOTM for us. We should not be conceding 9 attempts on our goal at home to Burnley.

I still feel we are a few 1st teamers short of competing for the title and this season is bedding in the new players and finding more consistency and hopefully a system that suits us and a stop to the pointless slow sideways passing.

We are still short in terms of creativity and goals ( yes i know we scored 5 yesterday) but the fact Marmoosh is injured means we have nothing on the bench in ways of a striker, and bar Phil, you wouldn't put a bet on any other player scoring and our set pieces are as bad as usual, the RB position and RW are issues where we need better quality.
Lets see how we are at the end of October with away games at Brentford, Villa and home to Everton then can see if we are progressing
 
blueste41 said:
It was 1-1 until 60 minutes and 2 of our goals were scored in injury time, dress it up anyway you want but 5-1 flattered us. I didn't say we didn't deserve to win because of course we did.
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It was good to see us keep going to the end. In games in the past we’ve declared at 3 when the game is won. GD may he important.
 
Marvin. said:
We have a real chance if Bobb, Savinho or Cherki click. The right hand side is not great at the moment. If we can produce an alternative 'prong' to Doku, then we will become very hard to stop.

The floodgates opened yesterday when Haaland set up Nunes but it was a little out of the blue. Burnley were defending reasonably comfortably because they could send 2-3 players out to shut down Doku. City become far more effective if we can switch play to another cutting edge. At the moment we have Foden, Doku and Haaland who are performing at a very high level but we could do with another supply line into Haaland. If we find that, we are in business.
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Agree with that. In connection, however, I would add that the most difficult and most important thing will be rotating so as to have as many players in form as possible at any one time. With young players and AFCON, form will dip and consistency of selection will change, but if we keep shuffling the pack and have more players in tune, we might surprise a few, including myself.
 
Slightly more chance than this time yesterday, but still on for 3rd. Could be second if Arsenal get battered today, as the 4 immediately above aren't likely to stay the distance.

Palace and Spurs lack the depth with European fixtures.
 
I still think we cannot judge until we play those back to back games against Liverpool and Newcastle in November, and even then we have to win our next 4 up to then, of which I do think we will do however.

If we beat Liverpool and Newcastle away, we will go one of our special mad 15-20 match winning runs. I 100% believe that.

We could end up having another 2020-21 season where we started that season equally as poor/inconsistent, but ended up going on a 15 match winning run in the middle of the season which won us the league.
 
According to the understat xG model, City have been the best team in the PL so far, marginally better than Palace. How come? Well, we weren't that bad vs Spurs and Brighton, whereas Liverpool were lucky in several games. They haven't been better than us. Arsenal haven't been brilliant either. They couldn't create more chances than us at their ground despite being the fresher team (but if they beat Newcastle, then things change somewhat).

Many on here are heavily influenced by the actual results and leave little room for luck and other factors (like a short preseason and injuries). When Liverpool win, it's because they are good and bought expensive players. When we don't win, it's because we aren't good (Pep is finished, the players are old or lack quality, and so on).

We haven't been great by any means. But we have been really good after the international break. If Rodri stays fit, we'll compete.
 
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BillyShears said:
Liverpool's underlying numbers have been really poor, as have large portions of their performances. So far they've found no real use for 100 million pound Wirtz. Their defensive organisation is poor, and their game out of possession looks to have regressed massively since last season. In short, they are currently trending in the wrong direction. None of that is to say that they won't improve, I'm sure they will. But they're miles from being the formidable side that people assumed they'd be because they spent a lot of money on Wirtz, Isak, and Ekitike.

It's far too early to be writing City off as genuine challengers IMO. We're trending in the right direction, and more importantly, we've recovered a lot of the intangibles that made us record breakers so often. It's also worth remembering that in almost every title winning season we've had, there's been moments before the turn of the new year where the same people same have said the same stuff about our general play not being good enough. The truth is you need consistency of results. Consistency of performance comes later.
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Completely correct particularly the vey first sentence.
 
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