APRIL 14 ― One of the most unexpected developments of the European football season has been the sudden decline of Manchester City from elite-level title contenders to mediocre also-rans.
The extent of City’s fall from grace was painfully evident in Sunday’s derby day defeat against Manchester United, with the 4-2 full-time scoreline only serving to flatter a City side who were emphatically outplayed after they lost the initiative following a bright start.
The loss leaves City, who just a few weeks ago were looking forward to the remainder of the campaign as an opportunity to challenge for honours on both the domestic and continental front, way back in fourth place and nervously looking over their shoulders at Southampton or Liverpool with the genuine concern that they won’t even qualify for next season’s Champions League.
On current form, they won’t make it. Since stumbling to a 2-0 home defeat against Arsenal in late January, they have won just four of 11 Premier League games, losing five games ― including to lowly opposition Burnley and Crystal Palace ― during that sequence.
At the same time, City have also been knocked out of two cup competitions, losing at home to second-tier Middlesbrough in the FA Cup and being comprehensively outclassed by Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-finals.
And things seem to be getting worse and worse, with City losing five of their last seven games to place manager Manuel Pellegrini under serious pressure ― less than a year after he celebrated his first season in England by leading his team to the Premier League title.
The evidence of the last few months certainly doesn’t bode well for the Chilean coach, who has appeared to have little idea how to halt the team’s alarming slide and does little in his media utterances to inspire confidence that he can effect a revival.
His tactical preparations for individual games have also been questionable, with United’s dominance of the midfield areas playing a central role in their comfortable victory on Sunday. That exact same factor was also behind Barcelona’s dominance over City in their Champions League meetings, yet Pellegrini appears not to have learned any lessons at all from that experience.
This is all exceedingly strange when you consider that Pellegrini arrived in England with a well-deserved reputation for tactical astuteness following his long and successful spells in Spain with Villarreal and Malaga, where he led unfancied teams to distinct overachievement over many years.
Quite why Pellegrini ― who even earned the nickname “The Engineer” for his calm intelligence and his ability to fix problems on the field of play ― has suffered such a tactical relapse is a mystery, but at the moment you certainly wouldn’t want to set foot in anything he had engineered for fear it would break.
Perhaps Pellegrini is having problems aligning himself to the demands of English supporters, who always crave pace, power and directness, and would grow restless with the more patient, controlled style of play he oversaw with his Spanish teams.
Whatever the reason, his job is now extremely insecure, with a number of names routinely linked to replacing him in the summer ― Carlo Ancelotti, currently in charge at Real Madrid but unlikely to be so beyond the end of the current campaign, is perhaps the best bet.
City’s current problems are by no means limited to the identity of their manager, however, because their playing squad appears to be in need of serious renovation following a series of bad moves in the transfer market.
Wilfried Bony, Fernando, Eliaquim Mangala, Stevan Jovetic, Fernandinho, Alvaro Negredo and Jesus Navas have all joined the club for sky-high fees in the last couple of years but subsequently done little, beyond occasional flashes of their capabilities, to meet the expectations set by their arrivals.
There has also been a notable decline in some of the more established stars, with Vincent Kompany, Edin Dzeko and in particular Yaya Toure all falling well below the levels of performance they had reached in previous campaigns.
The club is also failing, despite strenuous efforts, to produce any young players of note, with no Academy graduates playing a significant role this season despite Pellegrini’s past eagerness to integrate talented youth team players into his plans ― he was responsible, for example, for launching the career of Isco, now at Real Madrid, during their time together in Malaga.
The struggles of expensive signings, the decline of established stars and the lack of progression of young players all add up to create a worrying picture, with the age of the squad a particular concern.
Only Bony and Sergio Aguero, at the age of 26, can be regarded as having their best days ahead of them, with several players already in their late twenties or early thirties and therefore past their best.
Although this season is a lost cause, there is still cause for optimism because theoretically the squad contains plenty of quality. If David Silva can retain his excellence despite approaching his 30th birthday, if Samir Nasri can return to top form, if Kompany and Dzeko can overturn their apparent decline, if some of the misfiring signings can start to settle, City can become a force again.
But that is an awful lots of “ifs”, and right now the biggest concern is that things might to have get worse before they can get better.
For the first time in many years, these are worrying days for Manchester City.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
