REALITY CHECK: We are SECOND in the League, a shoo-in for the CL next season, in the League Cup final, a good draw in the FA Cup and playing fucking Real Madrid in the last 16 of the Champions League after winning our group AGAIN this season...and all of that after winning 7 of the last 8 domestic trophies available over the last two seasons!
All of this is very true, CB. And from a
fan's point of view, especially a long-standing fan, such as myself and, I strongly suppose, yourself, there are ample grounds to be pleased. Nevertheless — and here is the disjunction — in terms of where the club now sees itself as rightfully sitting, this is a somewhat unsatisfactory season. Because if the club now aspires to sit at the very top table, with the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern, Barca, Juventus — and it does — then it should be aiming to win the league every single season or, given the impossibility of that, certainly pushing hard for it. With the occasional CL title, to boot.
So for those who've been through York away, etc. (I was not at York away, indeed I was far away from the UK at the time), it's only really relevant to relativise City's “failure” this season from a long-term supporter's point of view. The club as it now stands is a million miles from that period. And the club does not compare itself with Watford, Norwich, Aston Villa, does not even think about being outside top four, at the start of any given season. Getting top four is a given for the club and team. It's expected. Certainly, it has to be earned, but the team is that good that is it
expected that it will be earned. That is exactly the measure of how very far we've come in the last ten years. And that's as it should be, frankly, because a huge amount of money has been put into this club, and a lot of long-term strategic planning, of which the CFA is only the most spectacular example. I went to the match on Sunday with a mate who is a neutral. He just loves to see good football. Right through the first half, and for much of the second, except for that fifteen minute period of mayhem, he was expressing astonishment at how effortlessly good City were. And you know what? He was right.
And that brings me to my second point.
I'll tell you what's really getting on a lot of people's tits — myself included. It is that we've have
almost never been truly outplayed this season. We have now lost six games, and drawn three, (not counting the loss to Atalanta and United the other night, in neither of which were we poor) and of those nine games, you could make a very strong case to say that we should have won about seven of them. Perhaps only in the game against the dippers were we actually outplayed, and even then there's those on here who'd take issue. Who could seriously say that we actually played
badly in either of the Spurs games? Certainly not any neutral supporter. We should have won both, by a country mile. We're 2-0 up at half-time against Wolves. We lose. We're 2-1 up against Palace, having turned it right round, with four minutes to play. We draw. We're all over Newcastle. We draw. This has been happening over and over and over. It's just incredibly frustrating, given the overall quality of our approach work which, actually, is just about as good as last season and the season before that.