I’m not honestly sure what Manchester City “manager for now at least” Manuel Pellegrini was expecting. Sure! Let’s save the good guys for the midweek game and throw out the B squad to the awaiting 8th in the Premier League lions. Heck, for good measure, let’s give them a fighting chance by randomly playing our number 1 goalkeeper, to raise his confidence levels ahead of the big clash of course, and not even have the rest of the lads on the bench. Perfect! Three points here we come.
Or something like that, anyway. Honestly, nobody is really that dumb to think that going out against a hungry Southampton, playing at home and in contention for European football, with players like Sergio Aguero, Kevin De Bruyne and Vincent Kompany swapped for Wilfried Bony, Fabian Delph and Nicolas Otamendi respectively was going to be pretty.
Pellegrini had a choice to make and he blew it, spectacularly. Manchester City B Team, B for Bench of course, were given the unenviable task of giving 8 sky blue regulars the day off so they could be fresh as they suffer the wrath of an angry Real Madrid at the Bernabeu on Wednesday.
Kelechi Iheanacho did Kelechi Iheanacho things, like score. Two goals, one of which was a goal of the season contender, would normally be enough to take home the victory and cement the young Nigerian’s name further in history. Unfortunately history is more inclined to remember the four goals Southampton scored instead.
Defensive howlers from Otamendi, indeed the entire back four were borderline woeful and completely mismatched, failure to keep possession or create anything meaningful from the middle line and one big Ivory Coast target man who looks lost and confused. All this thrown together and not even Kelechi, as emphatic as he is, can save Pellegrini’s blushes, let alone the precious three points discarded.
If all this sounds like I’m pinning the blame on Pellegrini, well, I’m not. Don’t get me wrong, he certainly deserves some of it. He prioritized a game that may well be the biggest in Manchester City’s history, but that ultimately will count for a lot less if they lose their grip on a top four finish. He also did that “definition of insanity” thing by expecting some sort of different outcome from players who simply aren’t up to the task, like say Bony or the increasingly disappointing Raheem Sterling.
All that’s fine and dandy, but in the end he had to make a decision and a decision he made. Perhaps the wrong one, but the point is that he shouldn’t have had to make it. Why, oh why, did the game have to be played three days before City were scheduled to compete in Europe? Why was Pellegrini’s perfectly reasonable request to have the Southampton game switched to the day before (i.e. Saturday) not even considered? Revenue? I’m not so sure.
I’m not a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist by any means, but if ever there was an organisation good for it, it’s the FA. This all just fits a pattern, an anti-City pattern, that has been prevalent throughout the league for years now. There’s no good will, there’s no “all of England is behind you”, there’s no accommodation made whatsoever. On the contrary even, it’s always seemed as if everything possible to make things as difficult as possible is taken. This is just the most recent example.
So there it is. Pellegrini had little choice to either take the bait and play his starting 11 or wrap them in cotton wool in preparation for Real. While that appears, post-defeat, to have been entirely the wrong decision, it is the lack of cooperation from the FA who brought this issue to a head in the first place. Only time will tell how badly City really needed those points today and whether they were a worthy sacrifice. My money is on no, but it’s a funny old game.
Victory and progression at Real would come in spite of the FA, not in any way thanks to them, and just about every other football body that wishes for all the world that it was another team from Manchester in our position instead. One thing is for certain though, don’t expect to see many of the same faces on Wednesday as you saw today, Kelechi and Hart accepted. Thank goodness for that, at least.