Manchester City cutting transfer market costs, Pep Guardiola’s uncertain future, Txiki Begiristain retiring and Cole Palmer leaving is not a good look.
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Good time to be bad
Looking at City’s form and the issue of the charges hanging over them, this might not be a terrible season in which to have a blip.
Not for a moment suggesting in any way this is anything more than a coincidence, but would a points deduction be that bad now? If they were a couple of points either side of Liverpool and they were put out of the race purely by a deduction then it’d be really gutting. Now, they could more easily swallow it, write this season off and prepare to go again next year.
Dan (Basing that on what I think will be the most likely outcome. I just can’t see it being the expulsions or title strippings talked about)
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Crisis management
Previous to the recent calamities Man City had rarely looked anywhere close to their usual dominant selves this season. Speculation as to why seems to be concentrated on the players. Some too old, some too young, general squad imbalance, and perhaps an over reliance on Haaland to score goals. Yet while all this rings true it feels more like a symptom of a deeper problem than the actual cause.
Over the last decade City have become an elite squad building machine. They’ve been stacked two deep in every position by very expensive world class players and when someone doesn’t quite fit they just replace them. Kalvin Phillips for £50m, not working, no problem, send him out on loan and spend £60m on Nunes. Mahrez and Laporte want to leave, don’t worry about it here’s £150m for Doku and Gvardiol. With this kind of system how can we explain a squad that now looks so far from capable.
If you look back over the past 5 years City spend on average £180m a season on transfers but this past summer that figure was only about £25m which all went on a Savinho who City basically bought from themselves. Are we saying the laser focused and ruthlessly efficient City management team dropped the ball and evaluated the squad to be suitable? Unlikely. Instead I think the lack of transfer activity points to a deeper concern.
Starting with the Der Spiegel articles of leaked emails, throughout the UEFA case against the club and since the 115 charges levelled by the Premier League, Man City have been extremely bullish and vocal of their innocence. There’s never been any acknowledgement that they may lose the case and face serious punishment. In fact their bravado alongside continued dominance on the pitch has led some to think even a guilty verdict would hardly effect them. However with the Premier League case coming to a head this season we suddenly see a spending drop off, an apparent tightening of the sky blue belt.
Its impossible to know just how the City management team see their chances of escaping the 115 charges against them but the lack of spending and their decision to start a season with an ill prepared squad does at least suggest they’re somewhat worried what could happen. Maybe they think £150m that would normally go on new players might be needed to pay fines or cover a drop in revenue. Perhaps Sheik Mansour has decided not to sink anymore money into a soft power project that might be about to backfire. Like I said we can’t know what they’re thinking but just the perception of this creates doubt.
From the perspective of the players this signal of caution, this allowance of doubt would surely have been detrimental. Perhaps they would otherwise shrug it off but there have been other events that in retrospect could help seed that doubt. Palmer opting to leave right on the cusp of first team football then instantly being Chelsea’s best player. Berrada jumping ship for Man United. The loss of the APT ruling with the subsequent public and seemingly desperate attempt to claim victory. Txiki Bergiristain announcing his retirement the day after. The uncertainty over Pep’s future. The thought that a guilty verdict may invalidate their achievements and effect their careers. All these things chip away at the idea of ‘the inevitable Man City’.
Once doubt creeps in and confidence wains then mistakes multiply and its easy to fall into a cycle of negative reinforcement (as a Man United fan I can attest to how quickly the air of invincibility can disappear). It’s the managers job to rectify this and restore confidence but with the Premier League case looming large in the immediate future its going to be very difficult for Pep. Its already looking like this season is now about avoiding catastrophe rather than seeking success.
Dave, Manchester
The weak opposition
After watching us sweep aside an ageing Manchester City team I started thinking about what people say about Liverpool not beating anyone good.
Actually I think there is merit to it. Arsenal and City are poor sides just like everyone says. Why? They are one man teams. Take out Odegaard and Arsenal absolutely crumble to a lower mid table team, and I’m sure plenty of teams will just mark him out of the game once they realise without Odegaard they’re a team of training cones.
City are even worse. No Rodri and they actually turn into Mourinho’s United who were comically running into each other and taking regular beatings.
So they’re clearly not title worthy teams at all, and should they win a title it would likely be down to blind luck.
I was actually impressed with Chelsea when we played them and felt at the time their results didn’t reflect their ability but now their results are starting to reflect how good they are. Maybe they’re the closest challenger ? Maybe Liverpool will lose the next three games in a row and give everyone a chance? Who knows.
The good news for Liverpool fans is we can actually lose three games in a row and still be top assuming second wins three in a row. That’s a nice cushion.
I also realised that both in the champions league and the league Liverpool haven’t played a single team above them in either, and probably won’t all season.
Lee
OK. Well I said 2 draws I would take.. Oh me of little faith! Wow…
I am excited! How can I not be. But on 1st December I should not be this excited…about football anyway. About Liverpool being title favorites for sure..
Incredible and now obviously totally worried about every time we lose points as being this far ahead this early, while amazing, is beyond ridiculous
Wondering if Ian still wants to win it by a point on the last day? Or is happy with the current state of play
Give Mo 3 yrs – The worst that can happen is we keep him a year passed his best.. then sell him for 20mil in 2yrs if necessary. Everyone wins?
(Well the worst that can happen is we sell him 3yrs before his legs start to go, to Barcelona or similar)
Robbo trying to do, and achieving, Trent-like passes was fun. There were some silly passes made in that game weren’t there!?
Al – LFC – Lets hope Newcastle isnt after the lord mayors show and the Everton are the same ones that went to Manchester at the weekend. ps. Comon Forest (always had a soft spot for them) level with city.. Ive got a few Forest pals who are as happy as me!
Here’s Stewie
A tortured parable for you, if I might indulge:
There was once a rookie race car driver – let’s call him “Michael”. He joined a prestige legacy Racing team, who provided him with a huge budget to rebuild what was an ailing car, that was behind the times. Now, Michael impressed in his debut season, making top of the podium for one of the exclusive races. Great!
So this Michael’s bosses decide to back their rookie driver unconditionally: they give him the power and authority to hire and fire his own technical team, get in his mechanics, right down to the PR guy. Crucially, the race Team provide Michael with huge patience and an enormous budget to succeed – a budget that far exceeds the spend of almost any other race team.
Michael improves, and starts challenging the serial reigning champion, winning key races and coming close to winning the championship – ultimately nervously choking at the final furlong on two occasions. But he’s getting closer, it’s obvious – he’s just missing an extra 5%. An obvious alteration to the driver’s car clearly needs to be made to provide him with that last weaponry needed to get over the line. Curiously, despite the entire world pointing this out, the driver decides to allocate his huge budget to an in-car ashtray and new upholstery. He insists it will give him an edge that other mere mortals simply aren’t seeing. The ashtray hadn’t been functional for some time, but nevertheless Michael is convinced its value at £65,000. The sellers of the ashtray cannot believe their luck, as they’d initially been content to get rid of that ashtray for £650.
Michel is also rewarded with a huge new racer deal, making him one of the highest paid drivers in the world, despite having won significantly less than other, lower-numerated racers.
Meanwhile, another of the big legacy teams – let’s call them “Limberwool” – who recently finished the season behind our Fake Rookie driver Michael (who has now spent 7 seasons and huge money trying to get over the line), hires a relatively experienced but little-known, non-glitzy driver to replace a recently-departed legendary driver. This new driver – let’s call him Larne Flot – is taking charge of a Limberwool race team that has finished behind our Fake Rookie Michael’s mega-bucks team, for two years running. Flot is given a meagre budget (he spends only 10% of our Fake Rookie) and maximum expectations of making a podium finish of any sort at the end of the season. Flot’s team get to work without fuss, Flot not feeling the need to give media interviews to discuss “Processes”.
The pre-season favourite race driver – let’s call him “Crêpe” – and reigning champ, suddenly has the most insane of seasons after an eventful one-off race he fails to win: Crêpe goes into freefall, failing to make the podium in any race for months on end. Leaving what would appear, a clear coast for our Fake Rookie Michael, to clean up. But incredibly….in his debut season, this little-known driver Flot; with his meagre spend and with little time to get to grips with this new (technically inferior) car and technical team; is absolutely blowing every single driver out of the water.
The race season ends, and Flot wins a championship at the very first time of asking, having spent a pittance. Our Fake “Rookie” Michael, is left fielding serious questions from the experts as to how any individual with such a clear advantage, failed to win a Championship clearly there for the taking after Crêpe took the season off. Questions are anlso asked about the decision to purchase the ashtray for so much, when an improvised piece of tinfoil would have sufficed.
Unable to withstand the depths of this humiliating, inexcusable failure, Fake Rookie Michael’s Diehard fans blame the Deep State, Hillary Clinton’s server, PGMOL, the rules of attraction and The Boogie, for the failure.
Stewie Griffin (we saw this before, remember that time Citeh, Chelski, Liverpool and ManYoo ALL took the season off and there was literally no opposition? Who won the PL? Ah yes. LEICESTER. 🤣🤣🤣. Slot is seriously impressive btw, Madrid, Leverkusen, Citeh and Chelsea all schooled. Top of PL + CL.)
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Nice
Is yesterday’s mailbox evidence of the first instance of an opposing team playing down victory over them as calling themselves sh*t?
Only a few of the usual type of fans will be getting too giddy over the latest United result, but we can still be happy at some of the signs.
As hoped, Rashford is boiling a little p*ss with 3 goals in 3 games (all nice), and critically his interplay with Amad who has really blossomed now he’s been given the chance we all craved for him.
Hell, even Zirkzee was able to shine. Add him to Hojlund showing a true strikers instinct, the signs going forward are good.
Defence remains “exciting” but things will settle, and it’s improving when you don’t rely on old legs. I’m hopeful for the chances that will be given to some of the star young talents.
The next three league games will tell us where we really are though. And while it remains very much “who knows”, at least there’s a positive feel to that unknown.
Which is nice.
Badwolf
Emery Christmas
So I sent an email about Villa starting to look alright last week, where I was also sniffy about TV commentators misidentifying our black players, and acted as if Boubs Kamara returning would save us.
Then I got Amadou Andre 3000 Onana’s name wrong, our Kamara-based midfield fell apart without him, and we got taken to the cleaners at Stamford Bridge. Looks like I’m performing well enough to get a job at Villa right now.
Was a bit surprised to only see one of ours in the worst XI of the weekend – although Philogene was bad enough for 11 players tbh.
For 2 years Villa fans have acted like Steven Gerrard is Voldemort, that we shouldn’t say his name in case he comes back, but that’s changed now – everyone was talking about He Who Should Not Be Named at the weekend.
We all knew the players weren’t as bad as the media were making out in 2022, as they were just trying to avoid criticising The Dark Lord in public. And after an amazing 2023, we were expecting some correction to the norm between all the ACLs and PSRs and UCLs and whatever. And November did look like a pretty horrible month with those fixtures. But blimey.
The way the team played yesterday couldn’t have been more Steven Gerrard if they’d tried to sign for Chelsea; even Martinez dusted off a Demba Ba moment. You imagine the only reason Emery didn’t come out and undermine himself by publicly sidelining the most important player at the club was that it’s hard to work out if any of our players are important at all right now.
If anyone has any ideas about how to fix this, I’d love to hear them. Obviously not playing Chelsea all the time would be good – as they do look really excellent. Maybe Dr PSR could prise a few of their unwanteds into Birmingham for a few months in January, like the Dirty Dozen or something?
That Villa v City clash in a few weeks should be interesting. Anyone nostalgic for some old school Barclays should definitely tune in for that one. David James up front, 5 minute Agbonlahor hat tricks, here we go.
Neville Raines
Worried about Eddie
Amid all the pronouncing Man City dead and Man United/Arsenal rejuvenation, I thought I’d offer some thoughts on Newcastle so far this season.
Newcastle got off to a pretty ropey start, some good results off the back of some unremarkable performances (I’m thinking against Southampton and Spurs in particular), and then some bad results from some ok performances. All of this went a little under the radar as Ten Hag was eating up all the crisis cub commentary. F635 pointed out that Eddie Howe would be under pressure next at the time of Ten Hag’s sacking, and this coincided with a bit of an upturn in performances and results, with headline grabbing wins over Arsenal, Chelsea (in the cup) and Forest making me feel like maybe the team was starting to gel. How wrong I was.
The last 2 games, were not at all encouraging. Newcastle were actually pretty good for a while against West Ham but crumbled when they needed to show some character after the West Ham goal. Against Palace, the highlights and stats paint a very bleak picture against a team practically on its knees. Newcastle have some form for this kind of performance over the last few years. They have been a weird team for putting in some absolutely awful performance against some poor teams (winter of last season during the injury crisis seeing a lot of it), looking either not coached at all or not bothered. Howe got away with it last year due to the injuries and the good will from the Champions League, but I wonder how much patience the owners will have for another year of underachievement.
After the Forest result I was looking at the next few fixtures expecting a bit of a push up the table, but we are now languishing in 11th behind Brentford, Man United and Fulham. Its not a great look. I’m not asking for a change of manager myself or anything, but with Liverpool up next there will be a lot of pressure to get results from the Brentford, Leicester and Ipswich games before the busy Christmas period including games against Aston Villa (you have my sympathies, first time in the CL is tiring), Man United and a Spurs team who’ll surely be out for revenge. If we stumble out of that run with only a handful of points Howe will surely be in danger of replacement. Amorim at man United might be showing exactly what a breath of fresh air can do for a stagnating team. I know he hasn’t been helped greatly with the club’s transfer dealings over the last 3 windows, but how long that mitigation keep a manager from the sack?
Derek from Dundalk
