johnny crossan
Well-Known Member
Why Manchester City are one defeat away from a crisis every bit as calamitous as Liverpool's
By Simon Mullock
Manchester City are above Liverpool in the Premier League. Mark Hughes is one point better off than Rafa Benitez having played one game less.
If you had told any City fan at the start of the season that’s what the table would look like in the middle of November, they would have taken it like a shot.
But when Benitez and Hughes send their teams out at Anfield tomorrow it is difficult to fathom which man needs to win most.
Liverpool have gone from a team that were regarded by many as the pre-season favourites for the title to one that has lost five times in the league and are on the verge of a Champions League exit.
When I voiced my opinion at the start of the season that Benitez was an injury away from a crisis given his reliance of Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, some Koppites took it as a personal insult rather than an honest assessment based on those things called ‘facts’ that the Liverpool manager is always so keen on.
That I turned out to be right gave me no pleasure because Liverpool are a club I have great admiration for.
So now I’ll put on my tin hat and wait for some verbal missiles from the opposite end of the East Lancs Road.
If Liverpool are a team currently in crisis, City are a defeat away from the same fate.
They have drawn five successive games – four of them against teams that any side with top-four pretensions would expect to win.
They were fortunate to come away from Wigan and Birmingham with a point and allowed a winning position to slip in home games against Fulham and Burnley.
My view is that having such a powerful squad has given Hughes unfamiliar problems that he hasn’t yet learned how to fix – how to decide what his best team is and what formation he should employ.
It says everything that Stephen Ireland, a player who carried City at times this season, looks lost in a system which reigns in his natural instinct to attack. At one stage he was left out of the team.
The Blues are the side team in the Premier League not to have lost more than one game – and even that came in Fergie time at Manchester United.
But anyone who doesn’t think that those kind of statistics can’t be misleading should look at the last time City started a top-flight campaign with just one defeat in their opening 11 games.
It was 1990-91 and it was the last time City finished above United in the final table.
They ended in fifth place, a real achievement given that managers Howard Kendall and Peter Reid worked under a megalomaniac chairman who thought he was God’s gift to football called Peter Swales.
Reid even repeated the feat the following season.
Closing up on the shoulders of the top four would have been something City’s owners would have accepted as real progress last season.
After allowing Hughes to spend another £100million on players in the summer, though, fifth would be nowhere this time – especially with Liverpool in such disarray.
I don't think so....yet...but 2 defeats?
By Simon Mullock
Manchester City are above Liverpool in the Premier League. Mark Hughes is one point better off than Rafa Benitez having played one game less.
If you had told any City fan at the start of the season that’s what the table would look like in the middle of November, they would have taken it like a shot.
But when Benitez and Hughes send their teams out at Anfield tomorrow it is difficult to fathom which man needs to win most.
Liverpool have gone from a team that were regarded by many as the pre-season favourites for the title to one that has lost five times in the league and are on the verge of a Champions League exit.
When I voiced my opinion at the start of the season that Benitez was an injury away from a crisis given his reliance of Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, some Koppites took it as a personal insult rather than an honest assessment based on those things called ‘facts’ that the Liverpool manager is always so keen on.
That I turned out to be right gave me no pleasure because Liverpool are a club I have great admiration for.
So now I’ll put on my tin hat and wait for some verbal missiles from the opposite end of the East Lancs Road.
If Liverpool are a team currently in crisis, City are a defeat away from the same fate.
They have drawn five successive games – four of them against teams that any side with top-four pretensions would expect to win.
They were fortunate to come away from Wigan and Birmingham with a point and allowed a winning position to slip in home games against Fulham and Burnley.
My view is that having such a powerful squad has given Hughes unfamiliar problems that he hasn’t yet learned how to fix – how to decide what his best team is and what formation he should employ.
It says everything that Stephen Ireland, a player who carried City at times this season, looks lost in a system which reigns in his natural instinct to attack. At one stage he was left out of the team.
The Blues are the side team in the Premier League not to have lost more than one game – and even that came in Fergie time at Manchester United.
But anyone who doesn’t think that those kind of statistics can’t be misleading should look at the last time City started a top-flight campaign with just one defeat in their opening 11 games.
It was 1990-91 and it was the last time City finished above United in the final table.
They ended in fifth place, a real achievement given that managers Howard Kendall and Peter Reid worked under a megalomaniac chairman who thought he was God’s gift to football called Peter Swales.
Reid even repeated the feat the following season.
Closing up on the shoulders of the top four would have been something City’s owners would have accepted as real progress last season.
After allowing Hughes to spend another £100million on players in the summer, though, fifth would be nowhere this time – especially with Liverpool in such disarray.
I don't think so....yet...but 2 defeats?