This season has seen him score in both derby matches and fire in a remarkable goal to turn the League Cup final on its head.īut it was in the match at Crystal Palace, the pivotal moment of the entire season, that he showed his capacity for picking up a game by the scruff of its neck, and shaking it down.Īfter City’s travelling fans had watched Liverpool lose at home to Chelsea, they nervously anticipated that they might blow it at Selhurst Park, a touch of typical City. Toure is the archetypal big-game player – he consistently produces something when it is most needed.
There are no finer sights in football than Toure switching on the turbo and powering away from markers and tacklers, the ball apparently tied to his improbably delicate feet. That has given Toure free rein to bomb forward, and the consequences have been devastating for the rest of the Premier League, as he has scored 20 goals in the competition, laying defences to waste. Gareth Barry was a great servant and a good foil for the big Ivorian, but his ageing legs began to look a tad too slow when it came to competing at the highest level.īrazilian ace Fernandinho made his name as a dynamic, box-to-box midfielder at Shakhtar Donetsk, and he was asked to curb his attacking instincts and sit deep. Not least, he brought in Fernandinho as a partner to Toure. The Chilean would have to thank Stuart Pearce and his scouts for bringing in Hart for £100,000, one of the greatest football bargains of all time.īut what Pellegrini has done is built on the legacy of Mancini, and stiffened the spine with some cute moves of his own. Kompany was brought in by Mark Hughes and transformed from a midfielder into a world class central defender by Roberto Mancini, who was also behind the signings of Toure and Aguero. Of course, Manuel Pellegrini can be grateful for the fact that he inherited the spine of his team. Get your central players right, and build the team around it, and you have a powerful, functioning unit – get it wrong and your team will wobble its way through a season, flaccid and unreliable. It has long been an accepted truth in football that any successful team needs a strong spine, and that the rest of your football “body” works off it. When the Blues were able to pick the world-class talents of Joe Hart, Vincent Kompany, Yaya Toure and Sergio Aguero in their starting line-up, they won every domestic game.Īs soon as they lost two or more of that quintessential quartet, the quality of the Blues’ performance, and the hard statistics, drop off dramatically. City are the champions of England despite playing most of the season with backbone problems.
0 kommentar(er)
