It was a little after 35 minutes when Manchester City’s supporters located at the far corner of the South Stand displayed the type of gallows humour required on a day when your team officially lose their status as champions. “We’re staying up, we’re staying up, City’s staying up!” they sang. It was difficult not to laugh.
There will not be a huge amount of laughter among the club’s hierarchy, however, when they begin the inquest into how City relinquished the Premier League title at the first time of asking for a second successive time. Manuel Pellegrini will hope those in charge at the Etihad do not react as they did in 2013 and sack the manager. But he more than anyone will know such a possibility cannot be ruled out, certainly not with Jürgen Klopp casting a distinct shadow over the upper echelons of English football.
In his defence Pellegrini can point to a host of mitigating circumstances, among them a string of injuries throughout this season and the sheer relentlessness shown by Chelsea in securing a title they last won in 2010. But the numbers do not lie. City are and have been second best this campaign which will not be viewed kindly by the club’s owner, Sheikh Mansour, who justifiably expects more for the fortune he has poured into the club.
What the numbers also show is that the root problem of City’s struggles this season has been a downturn in their potency. Pellegrini’s side remain the highest scorers in the Premier League but the 71 goals they have acquired after 35 fixtures pales beside the 93 they had at the same stage of the previous campaign. They finished, as champions, on 102 goals. Barring the most remarkable of gluts there is no chance of that happening this time.
This strikes at the heart of why Pellegrini’s position as manager should be insecure. He is a manager who prides himself on deploying an attacking style of play which was evident again after the 1-0 win against Tottenham when he stated his belief that it is “important for the Premier League [that the teams involved] play attractive football”. That assertion may have been sincere (not to mention a less than subtle criticism of José Mourinho) but it is also pretty meaningless if the attractive football does not lead to goals, or not as many as a team of City’s resources, especially in attack, should and need to be scoring.
City’s forward play has undeniably been less fluent and rapier-like than it was last season, with the team often guilty of over-elaborating when going forward or simply wasting the chances they have created. Pablo Zabaleta pointed to this after their 1-1 draw with Hull in February when he accused his team-mates of not being clinical enough. “Last season we were more clinical,” said the Argentinian. “This season it’s been hard.”
Not only did City score lots of goals last season; they regularly battered the opposition. On 17 different occasions in all competitions during the 2013-14 season they scored four or more goals; this season they have managed that only six times. Quite simply, this is a team that has seen a severe decline in its killer instinct.
Injuries have undeniably played their part, obvious most starkly during the Christmas and New Year period when City were without all three of their principal strikers, Sergio Agüero, Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic. Their respective knee, calf and hamstring strains forced Pellegrini to play James Milner as a centre-forward and, while the 29-year-old did reasonably well in the role, most notably when he scored twice in a 2-1 FA Cup victory over Sheffield Wednesday, it was a less than ideal scenario at a key time.
But even when fit some of those who should have been chipping in with a healthy return of goals have not been. Between them Dzeko and Jovetic have got 11 in all competitions this season while Yaya Touré has 10, compared with the 24 scored last season. Out of action with a hamstring strain he picked up in last week’s 3-2 win against Aston Villa, Touré watched on at White Hart Lane as his team-mates triumphed against Spurs and may have well have reflected on the real possibility of never playing alongside them again. Once that scenario was unthinkable for City fans; now they are more likely to react to it with a shrug.
Two players who have not let City down in the scoring stakes this season have been David Silva and Agüero. The Spaniard has 11 goals this season, two more than in the whole of the last campaign, while Agüero, following his decisive strike against Spurs, has 28. This matches his total return for last season and puts him only three goals short of his highest season’s total for City; the 31 he got in the 2011-12 campaign, his first at the club.
In the circumstances it was no surprise it was Silva and Agüero who combined for the visitors’ goal here on 29 minutes, with the latter at his clinical, ruthless best as he once again played the role of the man City turn to in their hour of need.
Silva, having collected a quick release from the excellent Joe Hart, slipped a pass into Tottenham’s penalty area where Aguero, having made a smart left-to-right run, steadied himself before striking the ball above Hugo Lloris at the near post. It whistled past the France goalkeeper like a bullet from a pistol.
For the remainder of the first half Agüero put on a masterclass in lone-forward play, something he was almost forced to do given Frank Lampard, positioned in a supporting No10 role, struggled to make any meaningful contribution in this contest and unsurprisingly was substituted late in the second half. On 38 minutes the Argentina striker twisted past Ryan Mason and Erik Lamela with ease before forcing Lloris into a save and shortly afterwards he skipped away from Federico Fazio and Nabil Bentaleb before setting up Silva on the edge of the area.
Before his goal there was also a sweetly hit first-time volley from the right and it seemed increasingly remarkable that Agüero, the Premier League’s top scorer, was not nominated for the PFA Player of the Year award.
He was less threatening after the interval but there was still an eye-catching shot from an acute angle that nearly caught Lloris out again in a display which made it clear he remains by and far away City’s most important attacking player. This was the fourth match in succession in which Agüero played as a lone forward in a 4-2-3-1 formation that relegated both Dzeko and the January signing Wilfried Bony to the bench.
The former remained there for the entirety of this contest while Bony came on as a 76th-minute substitute for Samir Nasri, who collected a groin injury minutes after replacing Lampard. Jovetic is out with a muscle injury and, like Touré, is likely to have played his last match for City.
Pellegrini has clearly lost faith in his strikers bar the one who has bailed City out time and again. Sunday’s match was the 19th of the 39 Agüero has played for City this season in which he has scored and, perhaps if he had not been out for a month in December and January, City might not now be reflecting on losing their championship crown. As it is, the spotlight naturally falls now on the manager who loves goals but has run out of a crucial number this season. Like Roberto Mancini two years previously, Pellegrini may ultimately pay the price for City’s fall from the summit.
