Four Four Two said we were going to be champions in their summer mag last season too. The front cover had a picture of Mancini, Tevez, Given, AJohnson and Adebayor with the caption "THE NEW CHAMPIONS?" and the article inside talked about how we could win the league title. I didn't think we could...we didn't!
Our faults last season were at left back; pace in midfield; creativity other than Silva (in fact we looked lost when he wasn't in the pitch!); lack of ambition to score goals (scored 18 fewer than United who had an average scoring season for them!); we didn't even try to score away against the top teams (P5 W0 D2 L3 F1 A7 Pts2/15 with quite literally about 5 shots on target from all five games); our centre forward dropped too deep to get the ball leaving nobody upfront; our centre forward was too greedy and didn't pass to players in better positions; nobody can cross a ball; we give far too many free kicks away around the box; we were average a hell of a lot of the time (rarely shite, but also rarely brillaint!); a little too often we were disjointed and lacked understanding of each other (this improved in the last 6 or 7 games!).
All this and we won the FA Cup and finsihed joint second in the league. This was because we had as many positives as I've listed faults above, I'm just concentrating on them for now.
We haven't, however, addressed all of the above points. We still haven't got pace in midfield or got another creative, forward thinking midfielder (GET NASRI SIGNED, CITY!!!). Will we have any more ambition to score more goals or to go for the top teams away from home? Well not one of us know the answer to that but at a guess I'd say yes, but not enough to score more than the average 78.4 goals the champions have scored in the Premier League since it became 20 teams (16 seasons) (we scored 60 last season) nor to come home with more wins than defeats at the other top teams. Will we stop giving free kicks away in dangerous positions? Will someone miraculously come up with the skill of being able to cross the ball into the box?
We will be better this season than last. I think we will win more games, draw and lose fewer and score more. We will have a lot more fluidity and understanding as for once we've not signed 7 players who all need time to gel, we've just got Clichy and Agüero so the gelling period for the team will be shorter than previous seasons and those who've all been here a while will be even more gelled than before. I think we'll have fewer average performances and a greater amount of brilliant as a result of this. But unless we address the areas from the paragraph before this I just don't think we will win the league title!
My prediction: SECOND! (and I'll be extatic with that) (and we'll be even better the next season).
