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Manchester City: Fitness needed to win the league

By Stephen Little

Jul 23, 2014; Kansas City, KS, USA; Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini before the game against the Sporting KC at Sporting Park. Manchester City won 4-1. Mandatory Credit: John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports
Jul 23, 2014; Kansas City, KS, USA; Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini before the game against the Sporting KC at Sporting Park. Manchester City won 4-1. Mandatory Credit: John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports /
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Manchester City sit three points off the top spot, but do they need more to win the league this year?

Certainly among questions asked in sports, it has to rank among the most obvious. How does a team win the Premier League? It’s not like every team in the league doesn’t spend multi-millions of pounds every year trying to answer that question. It always bemuses me every time I hear it asked in interviews, much the same as asking players what their plan for the game is. Listening to an inarticulate “well, I guess, uh, I’ll just try and you know, score” isn’t particularly inspiring, but it doesn’t stop the question being asked.

Perhaps I’m being a touch unfair. You see, in the case of Manchester City, their performances on the park have created many questions of their own and it should come as no surprise that manager Manuel Pellegrini is being asked, perhaps in a roundabout way, what the game plan actually is. With City dropping two precious points on Saturday in a rocky, to say the least, draw at West Ham United, one would be forgiven to think that Pellegrini might be considering a return to the drawing board for his next match, or at least the next one not at the Etihad.

Not so for Pellegrini, instead, while speaking to the Express he made it clear that it wasn’t bad performances that were letting the side down, but bad timing and bad luck. Specifically injuries have been identified as the chief cause of a considerable decline in the Sky Blues’ early season dominance. Pellegrini had this to say:

"“In the first 23 games, in the 11 players who played the most minutes, we don’t have Aguero, Silva, Kompany. I hope that in the second part of the season they will be involved in all the games because they are very important.It is not only to have the players but also to have the good performance of those players. There are a lot of things that you must try to work on from now until the end of the season and just one team can win the title. I hope if we recover all the players and performances, we have an important chance.”"

What Pellegrini is trying to suggest is, actually, we haven’t seen how good Manchester City can be this year. Arguably their four best players, Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne and Vincent Kompany haven’t actually managed to be on the park at the same time yet, through one injury or another. The spectre of injuries, admittedly not a problem unique to City, has left the club with a fluctuating line-up which Pellegrini identifies as the culprit for the inconsistent performances of late. Their last six games have seen 3 wins, 2 losses, 1 draw, and equally as many changes in the starting line-up.

What’s the problem here? Well you’ve got the captain, Kompany, who has been dogged by a calf muscle injury for what seems like but an eternity. In his place, Pellegrini has tried throwing every defender at his disposal against the wall to see if they stick, only to have them come crashing down to Earth and bring City’s goal difference with it. Eliaquim “defensive black hole” Mangala allegedly cost City over £40million and Nicolas Otamendi is taking Sheikh Mansour to the bank for a further £28.5million, goal scoring opportunities handed to the opposing team be damned. Neither have been the answer to the question posed to City and it seems, perhaps finally, Pellegrini is admitting it.

With other players, the argument does seem to hold up. Aguero now seems fully recovered from the injury that saw him miss 6 Premier League games this season. He’s shaken off the rough start back and is scoring for fun again. Oh, and here’s an interesting statistic, he’s now scored 90 goals in 136 games in the league, which is second only to Alan Shearer (113) for reaching that number in such a short time. Regardless, Aguero seems to be in play. De Bruyne also seems to be ready and waiting, albeit with some question marks over his finishing away from home. Silva, as we’ve discussed before, may be struggling for form but if we know one thing about Merlin it’s that he can turn dominating at the drop of a hat. Providing he stays injury free, of course.

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And that’s the rub, injuries are a fact of the game and unlikely to go away any time soon. Certainly Kompany’s isn’t. Pellegrini has been anything but candid on the exact length of time we’ll be without our skipper, but reports seem to indicate that it won’t be any less than a month and, indeed, it could be two before he’s in a sky blue shirt again.

Manchester City need a plan for the interim, it does nothing for their title chances to continue to haemorrhage points against lesser opposition and simply wait for all the pieces to fall together. Time is running out for Pellegrini to capitalise on their excellent position, just three points off the top spot. One has to wonder how long Arsenal, Spurs and Leicester will continue to choke and take pressure off.

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Having said all that, I feel Pellegrini is on the right track. It’s clear to anybody to see that City need Kompany back, he’s literally the anchor of the team, not only the defence. To have him back fully recovered, alongside Aguero, Silva, De Bruyne and others playing at their best, makes for a difficult team to beat. Until then, Pellegrini can expect to have to answer that same question.