At the moment the best teams in Europe are Barcelona, Bayern and Real. Barcelona were eliminated because the quarter finals coincided with a period of very poor form for them. Atletico come fourthin my book (despite beating Bayern) and then come City and Paris. There is a clear gap between the first three and the others. This is the gap City failed to close. Real are in their best form of the season: we have been playing well recently until Sunday. What has been clear from the semis, and long before that, is that City, in common with other teams, do not move the ball anywhere near as quickly as Barca, Bayern or Real. I think it is this which makes much of our team look static, not to say statuesque, when we play top teams - and our groups have ALWAYS included at least one top team. I don't think the problem is lack of effort - last night's BT statistics showed we actually ran further than Madrid, but they pass more accurately and more quickly. They also play better without the ball - they reorganise to get the ball back much quicker than we do and they hunt in packs. Our players found they were surrounded by three whites or we had to play longer and risk giving the ball away. Noe, in circumstances such as these it is easy to look "timid", as though you're not getting "stuck in", "not going for it". In fact it's very frustrating and you feel as though you're always running up a dead end. That was what it was like against Bayern at the Etihad in 2013 and in the Nou Camp last season. It's not that we are a disgrace, it's not that we are lazy and it's not that our team needs binning - it's simply that we have to accept that for the moment Real are better, just as Barca were better last season. And more perspiration never maks up for inspiration.
The good news is that a lot of what is being said in the papers this morning is nonsense. City do not have the problems identified. "This team" is not a mile away from getting to the final as Keane assures us. There is no point talking about "this team" any more, there is no point talking about "City's problems". "This team" and "those problems" were Pellegrini's and he isn't going to be able to solve them. Next season we'll begin to see Pep's team and they will play in a very different way. I don't know what our formation or tactics will be, I don't know whether they'll be the same two weeks together, but I am convinced we'll be very different and very much better. Whether we'll break the stranglehold the Spaniards have got on the CL is a different question.
