Pellegrini under scrutiny once more
There were periods during Manchester City’s 0-0 draw at home to Everton on Wednesday night when it seemed inevitable the visitors’ defence would crumble.
Yet Everton held firm, escaping in the 93rd minute when referee Roger East took leave of his senses and deemed the foul by John Stones on Raheem Sterling in the penalty area as a legitimate tackle.
How could it come to this? How did it take manager Manuel Pellegrini so long to get David Silva into action in a game crying out for an expert lock picker? How could City start Yaya Toure in that troublesome midfield two, when it has failed time and time again? How, when it finally came to make a change, was there only one and it involved a like-for-like swap between Kevin De Bruyne and Silva? So many questions and so few clear answers.
City’s season continues haphazardly towards the brink and the edge will soon be reached. The race for four trophies will soon find proper definition as Everton return again to do battle for a place in the League Cup final on Jan. 27.
With overwhelming pressure in the second half and an avalanche of chances that had amounted to 21 by the end, City really should have won on Wednesday. That they did not was down to a combination of bad luck, stout defending, poor finishing and a referee with inexplicable taste in foul tackles.
The emphasis in scrutinising City should now switch quickly from the leaky defence to the forward line. The rate of conversion to chances created has become a bone of some contention, particularly away from home.
“We had a lot of merit, especially in the second half, to win this game in a clear way,” Pellegrini said afterwards.
“But for different reasons we couldn’t score. We have another 17 games and the important thing is to try to continue the way we are.”
Clearly “continuing the way we are,” is not the best option despite the fact the club are still in contention in a season that has steadfastly refused to follow any logical pattern. Leicester, written off as a team that would be gone from the title picture by Christmas, are still there. Arsenal, perennial bottlers, refuse to snap. Chelsea and Manchester United, supposedly able to come good eventually, are not doing so. Amid all this stand Manchester City, with the strongest squad in the land, the best individual players in the Premier League and the greatest capacity of all to create the unexpected.
Logic tells us that luck will turn, that the clear penalties denied them at Leicester, Everton and again on Wednesday night at the Etihad will start to fall City’s way. Logic tells us that an attacking line that involves the guile, panache and verve of Sergio Aguero, Silva, Sterling, De Bruyne and Jesus Navas will at some point go pop. The goals will flow and once they do, they won’t stop flowing. Pellegrini has history on his side after all. His first season in Manchester featured a torrential burst of goals every bit as heavy as the rain that seems to have been falling in the north of England for months.
But for this to happen, City must start to put the chances away. In this respect, Sterling and Aguero are the biggest culprits. While Silva carves out the chances, he has rarely been the one to put them away on a regular basis. Aguero, with the encouragement of a great goal in the FA Cup third round win at Norwich, appears to be getting stronger and sharper, but the evidence against Everton was once again damning. Poor finishing cost City the three points that would have seen them tucked in right behind Arsenal and Leicester.
With nobody appearing capable of taking the league by the scruff of the neck, the opportunities are still there for Pellegrini to transform his (probable) final season at the helm into a thing of real beauty.
He has nothing to lose. The practical, careful tinkering must be replaced with the bold brush strokes of the risk taker. Now is the time for City to break loose in this season of stuttering false starts. There may be 17 more games still to play, but with every missed opportunity, there is one fewer.
Over-simplistic mathematics this may be, but so is scoring one more goal than the opposition and this is the unfettered mantra that must rule Pellegrini’s thinking between now and the end of the season, if he is to gain the reward the quality of his expensively constructed squad merits.
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