Looking at it calmly, in so far as it’s possible, we’ve got to allow that, against the big teams, we’ve not been bad. We took a point at Stamford Bridge, Emirates, three at Saint Mary’s. We’ve beaten Liverpool, Spurs, United at home. True, there was the disaster against Arsenal at the Etihad, but overall — not too shabby.
But what’s awful — and what will probably lose us this title now — is that against the smaller teams we’ve completely lost our seriousness and application. To be 2-0 up against Burnley and finish 2-2, to lose at home to Stoke, to draw at QPR, to very nearly lose on Saturday at home to a team that could not get a point for love nor money, that had taken a drubbing just a week before — take your choice, but at least two of these four are going down — no, that’s lousy, and neither injuries nor referees can excuse or explain it. Because it can only be a problem of attitude. Not skill, nor really fitness now. And that’s completely inexcusable, for me.
Time and time again this season, I’ve seen us start and indeed play the whole of the first half at an ambling pace, taking two, three, four touches, no overlapping, as if we thought we had all the time in the world, and that if we carried on playing our possession game, we would inevitably win. A detail, and I don’t want to single him out as being any more culpable than anyone else: Sami gets the ball in a clear goalscoring position, on his right foot. Instead of whacking it, as he did against Roma, he fucking moves it on to his left foot! Opportunity lost… The stats on our OS are a totally sterile 70% possession of the ball, and thirteen useless corners to their one. What exactly makes these players think that they have to start at a hundred miles an hour against the Chelseas to have any chance of survival, but against Stoke and Hull they merely have to stroke the ball around and these teams will roll over to have their tummies tickled? What?
Net result is that teams coming to the Etihad thinking they’re going to get battered, as they would have last season, coming out of that tunnel like turkeys at a turkey shoot, then looking round at each other after about ten minutes and saying “Hey, you know what, lads? There’s nothing to be frightened of, here. We can do this lot”. You can actually, visibly, see it going on as the first half progresses.
There are fourteen more games. Now I could do the rah rah “we’re City, we fight till the end” bit — we all can — and by the way, with the wages they’re on, they bloody well should fight till the end, that’s minimal service. But my clear-eyed assessment is that we’d have to go on a mental run now, and win them all, to be champions in May. Now I have no doubt whatsoever that in some of those games we’ll play very well and win, especially with Yaya and Bony back. But, this season, I’ve seen nothing of the steel and bloody mindedness, the character that we showed at Hull (yes, them!), Everton, even at Anfield, at the business end of last season. There’ll be a lowering of attitude in some of those games, and we’ll drop points. Problem is, there are no more points to be dropped. We’ve used up our overdraft.
Tell you what else. If we depend on Yaya to this extent, we’ve got a bloody big problem on our hands. Because soon, in the not very distant future, Yaya will not just be absent for one month every two years. He’ll be absent. Permanently.
