SOCCER:WINTER'S WHEEL has rolled Manchester City back to where they were 12 months ago: 32 points after 18 Premier League games. Never mind the Carlos Tevez sideshow, check out that symmetry. Beyond this narrow measure, though, the accusation of stagnation will cause City no more stress than Tevez's suavely rejected pay claim.
At the halfway mark last year Sheikh Mansour’s status symbol were sixth in the table, 10 points behind leaders Chelsea. In the deep cold now they sit third, two points behind Manchester United, who could stretch their lead to eight by winning their two games in hand. In a top four where Arsenal, City and Chelsea have lost 13 games between them, 32 points buy you a nicer perch. So Roberto Mancini’s side approach Christmas as authentic title contenders: a flimsy claim to be making this time last year.
Burning petro-dollars at a ferocious rate, the owners have spent €139 million on nine new faces since Mark Hughes was sacked 12 months ago. But progress in the league has been free, a gift from rival clubs.
Mancini’s belief is plainly that successful teams are constructed from the rear. City have conceded fewer than United or Arsenal but they trail their top four rivals in the goalscoring league. With the Everton defeat, attention shifted to the issue of deportment, of esprit de corps.
Halfway through the campaign, City’s biggest problem is still one of integration, which covers personal indiscipline off the pitch, egos and the difficulty in binding so many new players from so many contrasting cultures.
In City’s extended squad Mancini has 37 players from 18 countries. Eleven more, with five nationalities, are out on loan. Since Hughes left, the team’s Italian manager has recruited from Barcelona, Internazionale, Hamburg, Lazio, Valencia, Aston Villa and Middlesbrough. Hughes went shopping at Arsenal, Everton and even Manchester United, for Tevez. For two years City’s training ground has been the Ellis Island of football melting pots.
Each major signing has pitched up with his own education, background, gang of advisers, ideas about how the game should be played and his grumbles, all ready for the day he is left out of the team. Most joined for skyscraper money, not because they were seduced by the “project”. Unity is high on the list of intangibles the Sheikh’s money is unable to buy. City are a coalition, not a party.
The more they buy, the harder Mancini’s task in combining disparate personalities. Piling up individual talent is one way to blast a road to an annual Champions League place; but for City to win the league for the first time since 1968 the first XI will have to regard themselves as a single fighting force: a collective with one mission, as all successful teams are.
Some days City come over as a half-hearted ensemble of snoods and gloves. On others they display a more assertive mood and agree a common cause. Vincent Kompany, David Silva and Yaya Toure are driving the club on while Adam Johnson, Gareth Barry and James Milner have faded.
At excruciating cost, Mancini is no doubt privately dividing his squad into players who just want to take the money and those who are propelled by grander aims. His quest: to identify a group who can deliver on the rhetoric they hear in the corridors of Eastlands.
So on this wider measure City are a long way on from 12 months ago. Much clearer to them now, after all that spending, is the value of desire.
