Manchester City 0-0 vs Tottenham Hotspur: Where Is All The Money Spent By Manchester City?
Despite the high expectations, Manchester City failed to impress in their opening fixture of a new season of Barclay’s Premier League, as they got an unworthy draw against Tottenham Hotspur.
The English Premier League started on Saturday, with a lot of expectation from some new teams, including Manchester City. Unlike their rivals in Red, Manchester United, City has not been able to earn fame and reputation for themselves. During the past, they have been dominated by their rivals both in the league and other competitions. However, a takeover by Abu Dhabi billionaire Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan resulted in a pouring of enormous funds to take City to a higher level.
Last year, Manchester City spent more than any other English club to bring in new players. In this way, there were able to get hold of a lot of players from other big teams, thus creating a dream team of their own. However, they were unable to break into the top four, mainly because of a lot of draws, missing an edge to get victories out of a dominant position. After the season, football pundits said that City was a conglomerate of a lot of good players, without any world-class talent.
Therefore, Roberto Mancini, City’s manager, decided to get some exceptional players in his team. This year, City again spent millions in the transfer market to sign players like Jerome Boateng, Yaya Toure, David Silva and Mario Balotelli. All these players have a reputation of being among the best, so they were bought to change the fate of Manchester City.
However, things did not change for Manchester City; in fact, the situation has worsened. During their match against Tottenham, in White Hart Lane, Manchester City played like a second division team. They did not make any good chances throughout the match, and they were totally dominated by their opponents. Also, the players looked confused and disarrayed, as there were many instances of selfish play. Therefore, City did not look like a team, but a group of some quality players where everyone was trying to prove a point.
The problems at City have been created by Mancini himself. Even though he had some quality players in his squad, he got greedy to sign every player available to him. It looked like as if Mancini is trying to create problems for other clubs, rather than trying to improve his own team. Acting upon this rather strange policy, City signed every good player who was shown an interest by their Premier League rivals.
Now, the players are plenty but the positions are limited. For example, out of 12 players, only four would make it in the midfield, while out of another 12 only two would play as forwards. Therefore, many players like Stephen Ireland, Michael Johnson, Vladimir Weiss, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adebayor and Robinho would not get a position that they deserve in the team. Also, the players who have apparently made it into the squad would have to work very hard in order to maintain their position. Therefore, it seems to be a situation of chaos at Manchester City. Every player is trying to prove himself to the manager, resulting in a lot of selfish plays by the quality players.
Although all the money has been spent on building an attack, the best performance came from City’s defence in their match against the Spurs. Spurs looked strong in attack, and they came close to scoring on a number of occasions. However, they were kept away from scoring by a brilliant City defence. The best performer in the match, without a doubt, was City’s keeper, Joe Hart, who saved his team by making a number of excellent saves.
In this match, Jerome Boateng and Mario Balotelli did not play any part. Thus, when they return, things might get more complicated for Mancini. There is still some time left before the transfer deadline, therefore, it would be better for Mancini if he is able to get rid of some of his players, in order to simplify things for him and his players.
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