Hart eyes on job as City look to tip the balance

THEY all submitted 25-man squads back in August but Brian Kidd was not far off last week when he said he would not swap Manchester City’s for anyone else’s.

Alex Ferguson took it as a psychological ploy but it was not. Another issue for City’s fellow challengers is that squad will get even stronger this month, with the Eastlands’ club’s relentless renewal and turnover.

Wolfsburg’s prolific striker Edin Dzeko will effectively arrive as a replacement for Roque Santa Cruz or Emmanuel Adebayor and Benfica’s David Luiz, a defender who is also wanted by Chelsea, is another target who would allow Wayne Bridge to move on.

Players who are not contributing will be replaced by hungry young men who will. Those incomings are likely to be done before players move on but the message is clear. Neither Arsene Wenger or Ferguson are likely to spend this month while City can out-muscle Chelsea to players like Luiz.

If the Brazilian, 23, is given the choice, maybe he will be tempted by London but with City now being able to match their cash with the potential for silverware, they are a more attractive proposition than ever before to Europe’s best.

Crucially, Dzeko and Luiz would certainly represent safe bets in terms of the possibility for trouble-making, something City have also done to excess in the last couple of years.

They will join a team that has won six of their last eight Premier League matches, bouncing back from defeat to Everton with three straight victories, and is level on points with leaders Manchester United ahead of Wednesday’s trip to Arsenal.

The likes of Yaya Toure and David Silva have taken to life in the Premier League and have thrived in recent weeks, seeming to justify the huge amount of money it took to get them to Eastlands.

Another major step has been that for the first time in decades, and when you really think they might be fixated by their neighbours, they have other things on their minds.

“I’m not really bothered what United do,” goalkeeper Joe Hart said. “We can only focus on what we’re doing. We’ve been playing against Blackpool, then Arsenal on Wednesday.

I don’t even know who United have got next and I’m pretty sure they don’t care who we’ve got. They just focus on what they’re doing, and that’s we’re trying to do here.

“It’s still important to keep winning games. I think the teams that should be winning are winning all the games they should be at the moment and we’ve got to try to keep doing that as well.

“Arsenal will be exciting. Obviously they beat us here earlier in the season but it was a bit of a strange affair and I don’t think either side got a grasp of what the other is really like because we were down to 10 men after four minutes. So it will be a totally different encounter, a night game at the Emirates, you’ve got to embrace these kind of situations.”

Against Blackpool, they had nothing like the swagger they demonstrated in destroying Newcastle and Aston Villa since Christmas but they got the job done.

Adam Johnson, making consecutive starts in the Premier League for the first time this season, scored the only goal, a drilled effort through a crowd of bodies that deflected past Richard Kingson off Stephen Crainey, while Carlos Tevez also missed a penalty.

It set up a tight finish, with Hart being called into action to make saves from Neal Eardley and Brett Ormerod but they held on.

Blackpool’s manager Ian Holloway was privately far from impressed with City when they defeated his team 3-2 at Bloomfield Road back in October.

There were those around the newly-promoted squad, with hammerings at Arsenal and Chelsea fresh in the mind, that felt that Roberto Mancini’s side were way off their title rivals.

But it appears that opinion has changed.

“I thought they’d improved greatly on when we played them in the home game. I think they are learning to win,” Holloway said. “The closer they get to the top the more they will get together and well done to them.

“I didn’t agree with Mark Hughes not keeping his job at the time, but then again who am I to question what they are doing?

“They are doing it with dignity now. Not when they (owners) first came in. ‘We’re gonna get Ronaldo’ and all that! I didn’t think that was very dignified and it was bragging.

“But now, someone here really knows what they’re doing and the whole place is moving towards that wonderful scenario of one day, they might do it.”