“When Manchester City received the investment that has since changed the club beyond all recognition, Everton were reputed to have been one of the clubs Sheikh Mansour looked at with a view to buying. City were picked and moved swiftly on. Everton were not and remain more or less where they were 15 years ago. Both positions have their relative merits. None of the fans had any great input or say so in any of this [although arguably Evertonians did a sound job in preventing Destination Kirkby], so it all seems a little bit pointless getting worked up over it.”
These are the measured words of an Evertonian who has been going to Goodison since the early '70s. Among those who go back further than the internet generation, there is still a firm enough bond between two clubs who, for years, were very alike indeed.
City, for good or bad, have moved on and up. They are now a recognised member of the elite, regular participant in the Champions League and would-be purchaser of each star player that becomes available across the football planet. It does not come very close to how City supporters imagined the future, but I guess it'll do.
It has been a journey of giddying speed, of nerve-bending change and, as with all great upheavals, has left some of the football brethren bewildered, others a little lost, and yet others smouldering with a bubbling cocktail of anger and resentment. Nobody hated City in the bad old days. The club’s cocktail of foolishness and harmlessness made them an easy side to quietly like from a distance. Money changes all of this.
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This weekend, then, sees City’s well-publicised visit to Goodison Park, scene of so many recent setbacks, and the first part of a nerve-wrenching trilogy that might just deliver the most unlikely title win since the last one burst upon us during a sweat-stained five minutes of injury time in 2011-12 that will never be forgotten by anybody who witnessed it.
The Everton game has the look of Newcastle away from two years ago, a daunting trip to a club well-placed on the edge of the leading pack with a formidable home record. Much news space has been laid bare to opinion-givers and experts, foraging for the answers to the existence (or not) of City’s mental strength, to the truth about their real playing capability, to their actual chances of success.
Truth can be hard to find in such jittery circumstances, but one interesting statistic stood out this week: Manchester City have played only 6.8 percent of their season (or 216 minutes if you prefer) with all four of its biggest stars playing at the same time. Thanks to injuries, Vincent Kompany, David Silva, Yaya Toure and Sergio Aguero have hardly appeared together at all this season.
It is perhaps the one most telling City statistic of this topsy-turvy season, for which any side -- shorn of one or more of its major players week after week -- would have struggled to keep up with Liverpool and Chelsea’s (and at times even Arsenal’s) sledgehammer progress through the season.
City’s much maligned squad, apparently lacking the strength in depth required, must have contributed something positive after all, for which a rather large cap must be doffed to the likes of Martin Demichelis, Javi Garcia, James Milner and Edin Dzeko -- often criticised but each growing into integral parts of a fully functioning whole.
So, before you watch your diet of football this weekend, take one more look at the Premier League table. City sit in third place. Third. With three games to go. No club has won the Premier league from so far back with such little game time left. No title had been won in the history of English League football in the manner City did it last time, so I suppose we should steel ourselves for something slightly out of the ordinary again in 2014.
This is Manchester City, after all.