An extremely frustrating afternoon for all sorts of reasons.
Firstly, I predicted at the start of the season that the lack of European football would prove to be a massive advantage for Chelsea and Liverpool.
I now believe that barring a terrible run of injuries, Chelsea will eventually win the Premier League with games to spare. They’re stronger than us, they’ve got a good Manager, and crucially their game management is on a different level.
How many times today was a Chelsea player totally poleaxed, before making a Lazarus-style recovery, once the game had been stopped and City’s momentum slowed?
That sounds like a criticism, but Leicester were equally clever last season.
In contrast, City are a work in progress. We lack Chelsea’s vibrancy, and there’s just too many players struggling to adapt to our new system.
We seem to be top heavy with peripheral lightweight midfielders, and apart from Navas, we lack genuine pace. Our defenders have forgotten how to defend, and our match winners have forgotten how to win matches. Even worse, we allowed Chelsea to bully and niggle, before stupidly losing our heads. How many games will Aguero miss, now that he’s received a second red card this season?
That doesn’t mean that we’re a bad side. We could easily finish 2nd and progress deep into the Champions League. We might even be more fluid without Aguero.
However, this could be an interesting Transfer Window, because once more we’ve allowed the Kompany saga to camouflage our obvious defensive weaknesses.
