After losing yesterday’s derby, City now face a fight to stay in the Premiership.
After winning four straight games since the opening day, the blues crashed to a 4-3 defeat at the hands of their local neighbours who swept the blues aside with aplomb and firmly put them in their place. Let’s face it, City have been punching well above their weight this season, last week’s win over Arsenal was lucky at best and we were fortunate to come away from Old Trafford with only a 4-3 defeat.
Happily, that is not the reality. On Sunday, we lost to a team who promised to sweep us aside, to put us in our place and to show us who are the team in Manchester. And for ninety four minutes, they could not beat us. For ninety four minutes City fought with a passion that has been devoid from the team in recent years and United needed an extra two minutes added on by the referee to win the game.
Blues fans will find the defeat hard to swallow after seeing the team fight back on three occasions to hold United until those final disputed minutes. But let’s not dwell on the defeat or indeed the manner in which we lost but instead we can take a lot of positives from the game.
It was billed as the biggest test of the season so far, as was the Arsenal game. We would be again testing our credentials against the supposed best team in the country on their own patch. With Emmanuel Adebayor suspended, Robinho, Vincent Kompany and Roque Santa Cruz injured and Carlos Tevez a major doubt, the odds were stacked against us. No wonder United fans thought it would be an easy three points.
People across the land look at City and think the club have acquired one thing; wealth. They don’t understand that we now have something that money cannot buy: Team Spirit. In recent years, if we lost an early goal the way we did on Sunday, we would have capitulated and allowed the opposition to run roughshod over us. We would have given a brief fightback but the chances are the blues would have been two down at half time before losing heavily.
But this is the new blues who are prepared to put up a fight. We saw it during the Arsenal game when, after conceding an equaliser, kept our heads up and went on to score four. On Sunday we came back well and forced an equaliser courtesy of Ben Foster’s error and the vision of Carlos Tevez. Another striker might have gone for goal in that situation, but Tevez saw the run of Gareth Barry and calmly placed the ball into his path for the ex-Villa man to coolly equalise. If that wasn’t enough, Tevez hit the post in the final minute of the half. Would Adebayor have scored had he been playing?
As in the first half, City lost an early goal but again didn’t let their heads drop. Craig Bellamy scored the best goal of the game and the only goal which didn’t come from an error or slack marking. He hit the ball with venom, so much venom that he had non left when he slapped the supporter who ran onto the pitch. United retook the lead and everyone thought that was it. City were dead and buried now. But the new never-say-die attitude instilled in the team surfaced again as Bellamy forced another equaliser with a brilliant solo goal. In the build up to the game, United fans were gloating that we only had one striker fit and how highly hysterical it was that the striker in question was Bellamy. After ninety four minutes, United fans new the name of Craig Bellamy and were no longer sniggering.
Michael Owen’s added-on-time-in-injury-time winner consigned City to their first defeat of the season and surely the striker himself to the physiotherapy room after his exertions in that last minute. City were not beaten by a better side; they were the architects of their own downfall. Slack defending cost the blues, not opposition brilliance. The home side had to work hard to defeat us; so much for brushing us aside with ease.
One defeat does not constitute a demise. It does not mean the blues are going to be sliding down the table towards the drop zone, anxiously looking over their shoulders at the teams below them. What it does mean is that we can hold our own against the best in the league, even with four major players out and one playing on half fitness.
If we can do that on half strength, what are we capable of with a full strength squad?
PS, sorry this article is late but I bought a watch of a bloke in Stretford yesterday but it seems to be losing time.