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Manchester City finished the season in a distant second behind Chelsea. While that may not seem a particularly ignominious fate, it’s their midseason dip in form that would be of most concern to the City faithful.
The Citizens appear to have put themselves under pressure to keep pace with The Blues, rather than concentrate on their own efforts to retain their crown. It is something that nearly cost City the Premier League title last season, were it not for Liverpool’s own inadequacies when it came to keeping composure.
To be fair, it’s never a disgrace finishing runners-up behind a great team, but when considering that both City and Chelsea have near limitless resources, along with very comparable squads, losing a league crown with three games to spare puts things into greater perspective. Most would have banked on a much closer title race given the players involved: Costa vs. Aguero; Hazard vs. Silva, etc., but reality has proved vastly different.
Chelsea lost an almost negligible 3 league matches all season, while City themselves more than doubled that figure in respect to lost games. Even so, seven losses in 38 games doesn’t sound like much at all, and there are at least 18 other teams who would happily settle for that rate of loss, but when challenging a great team led by the best manager on planet Earth, 7 losses are simply too many.
Tactically, Manuel Pellegrini seemed short of a backup plan at times, and those glaring shortfalls were most apparent in those losses. Gary Neville criticized Manchester City for persisting with a 4-4-2 system that failed to get the best out of City’s star players such as Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero and David Silva.
Please click the following link to read the remainder of this piece: https://ballgeek.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/manchester-city-season-in-review/
