Manuel Pellegrini has denied his team are too old to win the title but conceded – just as unflatteringly – that Manchester City have thrown away a good position “into the garbage” since the turn of the year.
“Our team may be old, but three months ago we were [joint] top of the Premier League,” the City manager said. “You can say we are where we are because of a lack of ideas, a lack of a good finish or the lack of accurate passing in the final third, but if you look at the amount of possession we have, and the recovery of the ball we make to keep that possession, I don’t think a tired team could do it. We can analyse the whole season at the end, including the age of the squad, but if we had the best players at the end of last year I don’t think they can suddenly grow too old in three months.”
Pellegrini is attempting to become the first City manager to win his first four games against Manchester United on Sunday afternoon, though he says that achievement would be of little consequence. “That would only make you happy if you had a very big ego,” he said. “I am more interested in what position it leaves us in the table, and I would also like to give the supporters something to cheer about because it has not been a very good season. It was not so bad up to the end of 2014, when we were top of the table, still in the Champions League and waiting for the FA Cup to start, but in this last three months we have thrown all we did into the garbage. What we have to do now is finish as close to the top of the table as we can, because that is important to the fans.”
Perhaps more important to the fans is finishing above United. City go to Old Trafford behind their neighbours in the league for the first time in almost two seasons, and considering the upheavals at United in that timeframe Pellegrini is aware that finishing behind a team in transition will not look good.
“This one game will not define the season,” he said. “We are only one point behind, whatever the result there are six games to follow, and I never like to look at things negatively. We are not going out of it, we will try to continue being the noisy neighbours. We get a lot of attention for spending money, but all the big teams spend a lot of money. It is not just us, even though you might get that impression.
“We will try to continue with our project in the same way we have from the beginning. We will continue to improve, continue to try to be a big team. We were unlucky to have to play against Barcelona in the Champions League. We are not yet at their level but I assure you we are going to be closer in a couple of years.”
