Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Well, it's official. We are crap.

On new years day, City were tied with Chelsea on points.  Now, the Blues are a distant second, and Arsenal are tied with City on points, with a game at hand.  We lost to United, to Burnley for gods sake.  We've been eliminated from all the Cup competitions, by the likes of Middlesbrough and Barcelona.  Hell, we even drew with Hull.

We're crap!  Everyone says so, everyone knows it.  Pelligrini is on his way out the door, as are a number of top players such as Yaya and Nasri.  And of course Milner is leaving too.

In particular, Yaya is crap.  He doesn't run, he doesn't defend.  He wants too many birthday cakes.  And his agent is moaning that he's getting too much heat for City's poor performance in the second half of the season.

We're crap.  Crap, crap, crap.

Or are we?  Pablo Zabaletta is quoted in the papers today, saying that Pelligrini deserves more respect. He points out that City had a number of players in the World Cup, and that there was not a lot of rest over the summer.  Further, you can't always fire a manager just because he didn't win a trophy this season.  Several players have not had great seasons, and it's not clear that you should be blaming the manager for the poor performance of key players.

Further, we're in the top couple of places in what many consider to be the most competitive league in the world.  If we are crap, and we're second, what does that say about the rest of the league?  Is the entire league crap?  If so, why are we wasting our time watching it?

There are a number of players having seasons that they probably want to forget.  No, Yaya has not played great.  He's also on a World Cup and Africa's Cup hangover, never mind the birthday cake incident or the fact that his brother passed away.  Silva's assists are down, although he has scored more this year.  Navas is down in the goals department, and given the time he spends with the ball, you could easily expect more.  We went over 300 corners without scoring!  The flowing, attacking, push it forward football that served us so well last season is gone and the large gobs of possession the statistics show City have are spent knocking the ball back and forth between the half way line and the 18 yard box, looking for an opening that never seems to come.

Will we see changes over the summer?  I expect so.  There are changes every summer.  But if we can play this poorly, and still finish in a champions league spot, perhaps we're not the crap we think we are.

We are City!