Wobbly City put Hughes on defensive

PERHAPS there is something in the Eastlands water.

Perhaps Mark Hughes is correct and his team is still in the process of learning how to play with each other. Or perhaps there is some more intrinsic and fatal flaw running through the core of Manchester City.

But, for all the frantic comings and goings, the proud boasts about a bright new dawn, one fact remains concerning City – Eastlands is currently the place where the careers and reputations of defenders go to die.

It may sound melodramatic to write off the likes of Joleon Lescott and Wayne Bridge in this way but that is the unavoidable conclusion after this latest embarrassment from the world’s self-styled wealthiest club.

Television pundit Alan Hansen employed his stock-in-trade, the minute dissection of defensive shortcomings, in highlighting the three goals City conceded against the Premier League newcomers but, for once, the Scotsman’s hysterical moanings about low quality defensive play were not out of place.

Here was Bridge, bought at a cost of £12 million (€13.4m), wandering out of position repeatedly, and with great cost for two of the Burnley goals. Here was Lescott, £24m (€27m), being bamboozled by journeymen pros and inexplicably raising his hands in the area to concede a penalty for Graham Alexander’s opening goal.

Add Kolo Toure into the equation, for whom City paid £16m (€17.9m) this summer, and three of this woeful back four were purchased at a cost of £52m (€58.1m).

It has been said often, and accurately, that money is no object to City and their billionaire owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan but, surely, even he would have to question the wisdom of such investment when players like Richard Dunne and Vedrun Corluka have been jettisoned by Hughes. Does this current defensive alignment really represent a £52m (€58.1m) upgrade?

That very question may well be posed to Hughes by the Sheikh this week when the pair meet during City’s mid-season break to Abu Dhabi, a tour which features a friendly game against the UAE national team on Thursday.

Yet, as he did in handling queries from the media following a fifth consecutive draw, Hughes is likely to defend his defenders with more conviction than they are currently displaying.

“When you concede goals it’s got to be collective things because invariably there are consecutive errors, it’s not just one individual error,” said Hughes.

“Maybe Bridgey, on a couple of occasions, made the wrong decisions and things happened from that point but it wasn’t just Wayne today.

“I’m absolutely clear in my view that that’s where we are now. Give the opposition credit because they have had an opportunity now to look at the players we have and maybe they feel they can frustrate us and that’s what we’re feeling at the moment because teams have been able to look at what we can do to them.

“We have probably done better than most because of the players we’ve brought in with Premier League experience. That has helped us to do as well as we have done in the initial period. I think most people felt it would take a longer period than we have actually shown at the moment.

“I think we have done well given the small amount of games they’ve played together.

“But the more we play together, the better we’ll be. We’ll always be an attacking threat because of the players that we have but you have got to set your stall out, make sure you ride the storm and then come again. At the moment we are not showing that capability.’’

Hughes’ claim that City have done “well” in their opening to the season is a little disingenuous.

Four of the five league victories to which he refers came against Blackburn, Wolves, Portsmouth and West Ham, teams who are all currently battening down the hatches ready for a relegation battle. The extraordinary home win over Arsenal, the outcome of which might have gone either way, is the one eye-catching result of City’s campaign.

Yet, for all their shortcomings, City cannot be questioned or criticised for a lack of entertainment value, especially on this occasion.

Trailing to Alexander’s penalty and Steven Fletcher’s goal City launched a stunning comeback with three goals in 15 minutes either side of the interval, courtesy of a deflected Shaun Wright-Phillips effort, Toure and Craig Bellamy.

City should have gone on to win the game by some margin yet numerous chances were spurned, most glaringly by Carlos Tevez whose form is now giving an indication of why Manchester United were quite happy to allow City to pay a reported £35m (€39m) for his services this summer.

Eventually, and deservedly, Burnley substitute Kevin McDonald appeared on the end of an 87th minute breakaway and scored the equaliser that earned his team their first away point of the season.

“Some of their players cost £30m – but we’re all human,” said McDonald. “Lads in our dressing-room, like Graham Alexander and Robbie Blake, are 37 and 34 and still playing at this level.

“Obviously, everybody would like to have that kind of money, to buy the top players. What we have got is a good team spirit and great togetherness.”

And, as Sheikh Mansour is discovering, even in the Premier League, that is something money cannot buy.

REFEREE: Stuart Attwell (Nuneaton) 5: Allowed an almost risible amount of petty stuff to go unpunished in the first half, especially. It was a wonder Wright-Phillips had anything left of his shirt, so often was it tugged.

MATCH RATING: ***** Not one for the purists perhaps but this was as riveting as the Premier League gets – unpredictable, wide open and pulsating end-to-end, fluctuating stuff.