City, Hughes, and Consistency Blues

IT IS OFTEN said, generally in a slightly limp, apologetic manner, that the secret to winning the Premiership is consistency.

It’s a disappointing conclusion to reach but generally an accurate one. Gung ho attack minded theatrics are punished on the break and suffocated to death by focussed defending. The fierce underdog battles with every sinew in its body but falls foul of stringent officials and fleet footed foreigners.

This season Chelsea, scarily, has conceded a mere eight goals (one at Stamford Bridge) and rifled in 30, a statistic second only to Arsenal’s record breaking quota (plug).

The locks have been changed, and the new key to success isn’t turned by grinding out results, playing-badly-yet-winning-one-nil ala Manchester United, but instead sending more teams than not running from the turf squealing, with their tails between their legs and a significantly diminished goal difference.

We’ll come back to that.

To say the wheels have fallen off Manchester City’s campaign to sheepishly stick its tongue down the throat of the top four for the first time is premature. They’ll be fourth if they win their game in hand and only seven points shy of the leaders.

Momentum has been lost though. Five points out of fifteen have been won from their last five matches, with seven goals beating Given. Robinho, despite Sparky’s insistences to the contrary, is by most accounts unhappy and wanting out. The team’s notoriously impatient fans have tasted the golden nectar of…consistency!....and are getting itchy trigger fingers, with crosshairs settled shakily on Hughes’ head.

Of course, this is all nuts. To say City have advanced as a club this season is like saying the human race has come on a bit since the Stone Age. Their performances against Arsenal and United were superb and their squad has more depth than Liverpool’s (cough).

But the bar has been lifted. City is a team in transition that has the finances to morph into pretty much any form necessary, but with the two London teams at the top waking up to the fact that consistency can be achieved the beautiful way (there’s my original point, I knew I left it here somewhere) there may have to be many more millions spent before the title can be bought.

Is City a defensive side? No. Attacking? Yes, and an impressive one at that, but still a long way off their peers. And how many revolutions of the Eastlands doors, one wonders, can their dressing room tolerate before the legendary team spirit which it has purportedly developed begins to wilt.

The rhetoric coming out of the club suggests they will always twist rather than stick, and any players not pulling their weight will not be suffered.

Their bed has been made but The Citizens are tossing and turning, restless with the excitement of their new found wealth. Maybe suggestions that it would be their ultimate undoing weren’t completely born out of jealousy.

Have a good weekend,


AP