Monday, October 25, 2010
I KNOW we shouldn’t laugh but, a bit like the spectacle of a top banker having his gleaming motor repossessed, the sight of everything that can go wrong going wrong for Man City is a guaranteed source of schadenfreude in these bleak times.
But chuckle while you can – especially if you’re a gurning Gooner – because, with one major caveat, I’d still fancy City to finish above Arsenal come season’s end.
A 3-0 defeat at home might read like an obituary but the peculiar circumstances of yesterday’s match at Eastlands – it really was a blue moon showing – suggest it won’t be long before we’re seeing a correction to the effect that rumours of Man City’s demise are premature.
The sending off of Dedryck Boyata inside the first five minutes dictated the whole course of this game. With their fluent passing capable of pulling the best organised defences out of shape, there’s arguably no side in the Premier Division better equipped than Arsenal to exploit a man advantage.
Yet, City’s strength in adversity meant that, even after Samir Nasri’s opening goal, Arsenal huffed and puffed for long periods of this game before Alex Song made it safe for them after 65 minutes.
Of course, it would have been a whole lot easier for the visitors had Joe Hart not brilliantly kept out Cesc Fabregas’ penalty shortly before the break but it’s worth remembering that, unusually for an Arsenal goalkeeper, Lukasz Fabianski had to produce a couple of top-drawer stops of his own to retain his side’s advantage.
Having a man sent off early doors was not the only bad blow City suffered yesterday. To cap a week in which they lost the Manchester United player they never had, just after half-time yesterday they lost the one who’d already made the great defection.
And of all the players in a star-studded City team, Carlos Tevez is the one they can least afford to be without, as the joint failure of Emmanuel Adebayor and Mario Balotelli to fill his boots in the second half confirmed.
Which is where that aforementioned caveat comes in. If there’s one doubt about City’s ability to compete for the title, it has to do with Tevez’ long-term commitment to the cause.
No-one can question the intensity of his input over any given 90 minutes but he has a fractious relationship with Roberto Mancini and, recently, was even heard to express some disenchantment with the game in general, hinting that the toll his ferociously all-action style takes on mind and body might even nudge him towards an early retirement.
As things stand at the City of Manchester, for my money – and notwithstanding theirs – losing Tevez would be far more detrimental to City’s hopes of world domination than failure to land Wayne Rooney.
As for Arsenal, they played some typically eye-catching stuff yesterday but, just as typically, over-egged the pudding more than once.
Some distance short of ruthless, the final margin of victory might have flattered them but, though he knows deep down that 11 v 11 would have been a very different story, Arsene Wenger will rightly enjoy the day and hope that a rare away win and victory over one of the other big guns will help stiffen the resolve of his enigmatic side.
Yet, there was really only one clear winner at the end of an extraordinary week in the Premier League. Despite retaining Roo and stomping on Stoke, it wasn’t Man United. And despite bringing Man City crashing down to earth at home, it wasn’t Arsenal.
And despite actually managing to win a game of football, it sure wasn’t Liverpool.
The table tells the tale. Five points clear of the feuding pack, the only side who can really afford a contented smile are Chelsea.
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