Hughes the man

While I was away on vacation, the Eriksson dismissal became official. Shinawatra said that the second half fall was simply too much for him to take, and while I think that's a bit reactionary - is it really the manager's fault, or was it to a large degree a lack of depth? - I guess he does have a point. Between the critical choke against Fulham and the 8-1 loss at Boro, City suffered the two worst possible ways to lose (a late collapse and a total blowout) down the end of a season in which they were in desperate need of points to stay alive in the European chase.

I still wouldn't have fired Eriksson, but you could certainly do worse as a replacement than Mark Hughes, who made Blackburn a fairly legitimate team (and one with which City routinely had trouble) in the last few years, including taking them to the UEFA Cup a couple of times, a task he's now handed with City. I'll also be interested to see what players are coming in - the rumors have Thaksin extremely interested in making Eastlands into Brazil North, but I'm not sure whether Ronaldinho is really the kind of player who'd fit in at City, having spent the last year or so looking fairly undisciplined and out of form at Barcelona. Jo, maybe more so. Something about Man City the last few years has sapped the life out of every striker they've brought in (even though the midfield has seemed talented), with the possible exception of Martin Petrov. Jo has been linked to Arsenal and AC Milan in the past, so, you know, he might actually be good. Of course, you never know what to expect from players playing in England for the first time, but at least Jo has been playing in Russia, where the weather is worse if anything.

One thing I do wonder about Hughes - his name has been mentioned as the leading favorite to replace Sir Alex Ferguson when the latter retires from United, something which could happen in the next few years or even sooner. What happens if United win the league again next year and Ferguson decides to walk away - and United approach Hughes? Four managers in four years for City? Not exactly the way to establish your club as a perennial top-six challenger.

Is Sven-Goran Eriksson now trying to get fired?

The talk out of Eastlands for a good two months now (at least) has been that Sven-Goran Eriksson, after just one season in charge of Manchester City, was on the way out because of dissatisfaction from Thaksin Shinawatra - or "George Thai-nbrenner," as I have taken to nicknaming him - over the club's results in the second half of the season. However, in spite of an 8-1 drubbing at Middlesbrough on the final match day and a subsequent pair of 3-1 losses to Asian all-star teams, the sword of Damocles is still hanging by its hair above Eriksson's head. No doubt a bid to the UEFA Cup, however completely unexpected and only barely earned on actual competitive merit, has given Shinawatra some pause, and Eriksson's comments to the press have largely avoided speculation, as he talks mostly about the future of the club but in such a way that it can't really be determined from his chosen words whether he's including himself in that future. Not bad considering English isn't even close to his first language.

Here's the question, though: if you were Sven-Goran Eriksson, would you want to get fired?

The initial talk was that Eriksson would be pressured to resign. But why should he resign? He did the job he was asked to do - getting the club into the top ten in his first season - and obviously he's not going to walk away from that kind of money. If Shinawatra wants him out that badly, he's going to have to eat Sven's contract for the last two years. And in the end, it could indeed be this that stays his hand; could he really want Sven gone so badly that he would just write off millions of pounds?

But then, if you're Sven, do you want to go through two more years of this? If doing exactly what the owner asked for in his first season got Eriksson buried by rumors that he hadn't done enough and was about to be sacked, what's going to happen next year if he doesn't get City into the top six? (And with a UEFA Cup bid already in the offing this season, who's to say Thaksin's eyes don't widen to dinner plates again if City start 2008-09 in the top four just as they did 2007-08?) What about in 2009-10, when Eriksson is being asked - no pressure! - to guide City into the top four, a position only occasionally reached by clubs other than Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal in the history of the Premiership?

The problem, as I see it, is that in stepping in with a lot of money, Shinawatra has determined that he should be getting for his cash whatever he wants to get for it. The time frame for moving into the top four is almost embarrassingly ambitious, and in threatening to sack Eriksson so quickly, Thaksin has displayed an extremely short-sighted approach to his ownership. In various interviews with the official club podcast, Thaksin had stated on multiple occasions that the top ten was the plan for 2007-08, and appeared to acknowledge that the club's late-season struggles were due in part to injuries and a general lack of depth which, he suggested, would be remedied over the summer. Now it just seems like he was lying through his teeth. The depth issue may still be remedied, but the very act of acknowledging it tells you that Eriksson does not seem to blame for the post-New Year's dip in form. More than likely, Shinawatra just got greedy, eyeing that early-season splash and assuming that things could stay that way all season without fail.

City have dropped two 3-1 defeats to Asian all-star sides you'd think a Premier League club could have defeated, but you have to consider the sides City put out - in the second game, agains the South China Invitational XI, Eriksson started just four players who had featured regularly all year in Darius Vassell, Martin Petrov, Geovanni, and Javier Garrido. Meanwhile, five players from the City youth squad saw significant time, and the second-half struggles were in front of a fourth-string goaltender whose name I'd never even read before. This is the time at which you have to wonder whether Eriksson was using meaningless friendlies to see what he could get out of reserves and Academy players, or whether he was conspicuously starting subpar sides while right under Shinawatra's nose in the hope of forcing the chairman to swing the axe. The rumors have been swirling that Sven has already signed a provisional deal with Benfica to become their manager as soon as he is fired by City; other rumors had the Mexican national team extending him an offer to be their coach. The mere fact that one of the biggest and most successful European clubs has been so desperate to bring Eriksson in (and a fairly prominent international team as well) should suggest to Thaksin that just maybe he really does have a good manager on his hands after all. But after having done all he can to alienate Eriksson, it may just be that Shinawatra will have to give him the boot, lest the Swede maintain the recent form where both he and the players have started to seem like they'd rather be anywhere but Manchester City.

Sven... and now?

Given the recent history of Manchester City, a guaranteed top-ten finish with three games to go - to say nothing of a derby double over United - would have endeared any manager to the City faithful. But Sven-Goran Eriksson also brought an eye for talent and a stylistic flair not seen at City for some time, winning him legions of fans - most crucially club owner Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin declared his admiration for Sven in an interview with the club's official podcast in late October, saying City were "lucky" to have him as manager, and in another interview in mid-February told of his affinity for Eriksson's coaching style. There were, at the time, virtually no hints of the soap opera to come - in which rumors poured out of Eastlands that Sven was going to be asked to resign at season's end, and that he would likely be fired outright if he didn't.

To be sure, City limped down the stretch after spending much of the year in the European places. And Sven's biggest-money buy of the summer, Rolando Bianchi, was back in Italy within six months. But the majority of Sven's buys did catch on, and the squad was bitten by the injury bug a few times, most critically losing defensive superstar Micah Richards for much of the season's second half. Above all, it was a five-place improvement over City's 14th-place finish in 2006-07, and those Blues scored an embarrassing 29 goals all season, to this year's 44 - still not a lot in 37 games so far, but a marked improvement. City will also finish with more wins than losses this year no matter what happens in match #38 against Boro this Sunday at the Riverside, and with 15 wins so far they've already won as many contests this year as in any since returning to the top flight in 2002-03, and a win against Boro would be the most. By all normal City standards, it's been a pretty successful year, and one that lived up to Thaksin Shinawatra's stated preseason goal of a top ten finish.

But despite living up to that goal, the rumors have been persistent that Eriksson is on the way out. The manager himself has mostly refused to address the rumors directly, but as he repeatedly thanks the fans for the support they have shown him, he sounds like a man satisfied that his days are numbered but not entirely sure why. In his interview on the most recent club podcast, Sven sounded weary, tired of addressing the rumors but unable to deny them. His agent has stated that Sven does not plan to resign but at the same time that he does not expect Sven to be with the club next season; the players have united behind Sven, to the extent of apparently planning to boycott a preseason Thailand tour (which Sven reportedly talked them out of doing), but it's not clear if this is having any effect. One thing is for sure - there's only one man whose opinion counts, and he certainly seems to have his mind made up.

The question is: why?

1. City's sliding finish - a 5-4-8 record since the New Year (after a 10-6-4 fall) - led Shinawatra to believe that Sven couldn't effectively manage a team for a full season.

If he really believes this, he should just sell the team right now, because it suggests to me that he knows nothing about football. True, City were maddeningly inconsistent in 2008 - they beat Man U (at Old Trafford!), Spurs and Pompey, but they lost a heartbreaker-cum-choke job to Fulham in the final home game, lost to then-rivals Everton twice in the span of six weeks, lost 3-1 and 2-0 to relegation strugglers Birmingham and Reading, and slogged through frustrating draws with Wigan, Bolton, West Ham, and Derby, only the worst team in Premiership history. But while football is a results-oriented business, you have to consider that Micah Richards missed the last two months, and furthermore that several regulars in the City side have been playing their first season in the Premiership, possibly the toughest league in the world. Other teams may have made adjustments to players like Elano, Geovanni and Martin Petrov; some of them may have tired out a bit over the rough schedule in a way they might not do in future years with a season or more under their belt.

Try looking at it this way - suppose City started 5-4-8, then finished with a 10-6-4 run down the stretch. Eriksson would be lauded for having gotten the team to play together effectively, and it's highly unlikely that there'd be any calls for his head from the top. The inability to build momentum was a problem, but there are any number of possible reasons for it, many of which have nothing to do with Sven.

2. Shinawatra found a bigger manager on offer.

Who else is out there? Big Phil Scolari is the only name I've heard seriously mentioned who seems like a theoretical "upgrade," except that Scolari has said in the past that he'd never want to live in England, and he doesn't have the European club experience that Sven does. Mourinho isn't coming to City, I don't care how much money you throw at him, and furthermore Chelsea's Champions League breakthrough under Grant proves that Mourinho isn't the King Midas everyone thought anyway.

3. Shinawatra feels jealous of the loyalty to Sven exhibited by the fans.

This would just be ridiculous and beyond petty, so I hope it's not true. But in that same mid-February interview, Thaksin said "I want [the fans] to love me." And they may, but you know who they love more right now? Sven-Goran Eriksson. You fire Sven and you are absolutely King Asshole. But if anything, it's possible that the fan outcry has only hardened Thaksin's resolve - sure, he's going to be unpopular at first if he fires Sven, but ultimately, he's the one with the money. And if his next coach does take City to silverware, Thaksin's going to be able to take a lot of the credit (although the coach is going to get a lot of it too). And then the fans definitely will love him. But that's quite a calculated risk, and again, being jealous of Sven would just be childish.

Are there any other possibilities? I just don't get it. Everyone wants Sven to stay. He's under contract. There's only one game left; after that, it's in Thaksin's hands. If he cares about this team and not his own ego, at all, he'll make the right choice. But I think we're all pretty afraid he just doesn't have that in him.

Blue moon, you saw me standing alone in first place

It's way, way too early to get too excited - especially with the wins coming over a newly-promoted Derby, a nearly-relegated West Ham, and a United team that was merely missing its two best players. But nine points from three games - and no goals allowed yet - is a pretty exciting start to the season, especially leaving City as it does alone in first, two points clear of Chelsea. The new players seem to be fitting together pretty well, and Schmeichel is performing capably, though of course the real star is Micah Richards, as anyone could have predicted.

The next three games will tell the story: at Arsenal, at Bristol City in the Carling Cup, at Blackburn. City rarely beat Arsenal, never beat Blackburn, and have struggled in the Carling recently, bowing out to much lesser opposition than Bristol, a Championship team, in each of the last two seasons. If City can get through September with no more than one loss - and the post-Blackburn games are Aston Villa, at Fulham, and Newcastle, so the possibility exists - then I may start getting very excited. For now it's just nice to see a fast start - of course, 2005/06 started similarly - D-W-W-W-D, the last draw an inspiring hold at Old Trafford - and then collapsed following the debacle at Doncaster. Fingers crossed that Sven doesn't repeat the same freefall to 15th in the table that that team had. (I'm guessing not, if only because of the available funds that didn't exist in 2005.)

A whole new ball game

West Ham 0-2 Man City

I didn't see the game and I haven't gotten to see the highlights either, on account of the MCFCTV.com site being down for a month while it updates something or other. I did read the recap, though, the prevailing theme of which appears to be this:

"Man City looked pretty good for a team that has only just come together, but it might just have been that West Ham were terrible."

Looking at the box score was strange; it's almost like I pull for a totally different club now. Just five starters on Saturday saw any time for City last year - Dunne, Johnson, Hamann, Ireland, and Richards - and only two more on the bench (including reserve keeper Joe Hart, who got fully one start last year). Both goals were scored by new boys.

I'm still not sure what to make of it. It's one thing to have your club sign a couple new players, but we're talking a very significant overhaul, and the removal or displacement of a lot of names I knew - Vassell and Samaras, for instance, or recent departures like Sylvain Distin - has made it almost difficult to recognize the club as City. (The irony of a fairly recent fan saying this is palpable, I'm sure, but I feel it nonetheless.) It's kind of stupid, of course, because last year's side was almost unendingly pathetic, scoring just ten goals at home and relying on its defense to stay out of the Championship. The year before that, while it started promising, finished no better. So surely it's not that I'm nostalgic. Maybe I'm just baffled at seeing a team I like actually go for it - it's almost like the Cubs this year, though they're easier to recognize because I already knew who Alfonso Soriano and Ted Lilly were, and also because the turnover was not nearly as thorough. I'll watch as many games this year as I reasonably can, and the highlights when available, and get to know this new side, and hopefully things will progress towards Europe over the next couple seasons as Shinawatra's goal is stated. But for now... it's still going to take some getting used to.

It's back

Due to Man City's impossibly lackluster finish to the 2006-2007 campaign, I pretty much lost interest in posting about soccer for a while, but with the 2007-2008 season just a couple weeks from beginning, this is as good a time as any to get back into the swing of things.

I liked Stuart Pearce, so it was tough to see him go, but after two successive finishes in the bottom half of the table, and ten home goals this past year (a record low), I don't see how anyone could have been surprised. I don't know that it was all Pearce's fault - he wasn't given much money to work with, and every striker he brought in was just too inconsistent, with Samaras and Vassell having difficulty displaying their class on a match-to-match basis and Corradi struggling mightily in his first English season.

Barton was the best player on the team - at least among those who don't play on the back line (Micah Richards) - so it was a shame to see him go. But then again, it really, really wasn't. You just can't keep guys like that around. I'm not ashamed to admit that I read about his injury today and had a bit of schadenfreude about it. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, right?

Opinion is hugely split on the whole Shinawatra/Eriksson thing. I'm not so far terribly concerned about the owner - the charges against him have been levied by the coup that overthrew him, which doesn't exactly seem the most reputable source ever - but of course I think everyone is given a bit of pause by Eriksson, considering how his time with England ended. The optimists point to his strong club record; the pessimists point to England and the fact that his club successes mostly came in Italy. Of course, it's hard to say how much of England was Sven's fault; it seemed like he delegated a lot of the job to McLaren, which is another issue entirely, but certainly under McLaren's full-time stewardship England haven't done much so far (albeit with few chances to). You could also argue that the failure of the team to win came in part from the difficulty in assembling so many stars - I don't think even Brazil and Argentina had their sides stocked with so many world-famous players. When you have a team on which almost no one is used to being a role player - even the guys playing what are normally role-player positions - it may be hard to adjust, especially when clubs are complaining more than ever about players putting time in for their national teams. Eriksson didn't seem great about second-half adjustments, true, but look - England can't win the World Cup every year. This generation is talented, but their failure to win cannot be laid entirely at Eriksson's feet. And the fake sheik scandal notwithstanding, I think the charges that he somehow charmed Shinawatra into giving him the job are probably more than a bit overblown. Eriksson's a big name, like it or not; Shinawatra wanted to make a splash, and who else was out there?

Whether Rolando Bianchi is the striking savior of this club, I don't know; England is not Italy. It's not Sweden, either, where Bianchi has impressed with three goals in two games on City's preseason tour. But having another Italian around seems to have perked up Corradi, and that's a start. Man City have a long and sordid history of playing down to the level of their opponents, but in three preseason games so far against generally lesser opposition, they have three fairly comfortable wins. I'd call that progress.

Bring on West Ham.

A tale of two Citys

For the second year in a row, Manchester City has been doing something rather odd - progressing to the quarterfinal round of the FA Cup (last year's appearance their first in something like two decades) while absolutely tanking in the league. The EPL season hasn't been kind to City - they've crawled no higher than ninth, currently sit just six points clear of the relegation zone, and have lost the ability even to win games at home. Since the conclusion of their surprising post-Christmas three-game winning streak, which concluded with a 2-1 win over Everton on New Year's Day, City are 0-1-4 in the league and have scored just a single goal. In the same period they're 3-1-0 in FA Cup games, although it probably bears mentioning that all three games have come against Championship opposition. City's opponent tomorrow is Blackburn, a club that City have already lost to twice this year by a combined 7-2 scoreline. In fact, boding particularly well for this tie, City last beat Blackburn on August 25, 2003, long enough ago that the winning goal was scored by Nicolas Anelka, who hasn't donned the City shirt since I started following the club, but whose goalscoring prowess certainly appears sorely missed.

With just ten games left in the season and staying up no longer the certainty it once was, perhaps it would be best if City lost to Blackburn on Sunday, which history seems to dictate they will anyway. Inability to finish has been the thorn in City's side all season, and putting all their eggs in Mido's basket only to see Spurs hold onto him at the eleventh hour of the transfer window means that the only candidate to save the season, aside from someone like Vassell or Samaras going on a seemingly unlikely tear, is Emile Mpenza, a Belgian striker whose highest all-competitions scoring total in the past six seasons is six goals in 2002-03. You will forgive my skepticism.

The point is that the FA Cup may well be a distraction. City's fortunes during last year's FA Cup run were decidedly better - four wins and five losses in nine games may not be anything to write home about, but it's certainly better than a draw and four losses in five. It's a bit suspicious on the heels of a three-game win streak. Maybe all the time off in February contributed to the sluggishness in the Wigan loss, but how do you explain 3-0 to Blackburn? (Other than the obvious fact that City can't beat Blackburn.)

There are some big games coming up. City still must host Chelsea, United and Liverpool, and there is probably no game in the remaining ten more important than April 6 when Charlton come to Eastlands. If City are still holding on by only a couple wins at that point, points will be absolutely paramount (as though they weren't already). But who's going to score? Joey Barton leads the team with five league goals but hasn't scored in the Premiership since December 17. Samaras has four goals but they've come in just two games. Vassell has found the net in the Cup, but not since November - and just once total - in the league.

It's dire. City seem to look worse with every league game, and as they've plummeted to 17th it's brought relegation worries to the front of my mind. One of the many reasons I chose to follow City was I didn't think they had much danger of being relegated, since they were a Robbie Fowler penalty miss out of Europe in 2005 when I picked them up. In 2006 they started hot and then faded to 16th; this year has been even worse. They're just 2-1-1 so far against the three teams currently occupying the relegation zone; if that number doesn't improve to 4-1-1 between now and the end of the year, things could get a lot worse.

So do I want City to advance in the FA Cup? Well, of course. It would be nice to see them exorcise the Blackburn demons, for one thing. But if they can't figure it out in the league, would it even matter? Has a Premiership team ever won the FA Cup and been relegated in the same year? I'm confident that City have talent so I don't know why it struggles so much to show itself - but if there was ever a time where they really, really needed to do that, it's now.

Sore perdedores

It has gotten to the point - certainly on US soil, but let's not forget the round of 16 in 2002, either - where it's not a US-Mexico soccer game unless it ends with the US winning and Mexico playing the part of the whiny, sore losers. This came to a particular head under Ricardo La Volpe, who derided the US in 2005 as having played like various female members of his family - this after a game in which the US won 2-0 and clinched a spot in Germany. The Americans took a beating after their "early" exit in '06 - partly deserved, partly gleeful kick-'em-when-they're-down mentality on the part of the foreign press and fans. But while the US were wholly outclassed by the Czech Republic, they were the only team in the tournament not to lose to Italy despite two red cards, at least one of which was pretty questionable (and if not for Brian McBride being in the wrong place at the wrong time, things might have been different), and at least part of the problem with the Ghana game was that the team already had one foot on the plane (which is certainly their own problem, but understandable in its way given how draining the Italy game must have been). None of this should really have changed the fact that the US has become, at worst, a top two team in CONCACAF; excepting the usually competitive Costa Rica and an occasional streaky outlier, the US/Mexico pairing is turning into CONCACAF's Old Firm, and with all the attendant venom.

This time it was another 2-0 win for the US and another series of complaints from Mexico about the US's tactics - never mind how well those tactics may have worked. Mexico dominated possession but couldn't put the ball in the net; the US scored twice with the relatively few chances they carved out. Arrogant soccer teams that fail to finish while dominating possession rarely place blame on themselves or give credit to the opposing defense; they usually suggest that the other team was "lucky" to win. And guess what?

"The result was unjust." The words of coach Hugo Sanchez. "This is a unique game in that you can deserve to win and still lose. We deserved to win and they did not."

So, Hugo, can you explain why you deserved to win? Was it your shots that did not go in or were saved? Your attacks that were snuffed out by the aggressive US defense? The two goals you couldn't keep out of your net? Surely you don't think Mexico should have won solely because they held the ball more.

The US's style involves counterattacking and defense. Is it something that bothers me a bit? Yes, because it gets exposed by some teams (the Czechs, for example) and makes it hard to come back from a deficit. But for some reason the Mexicans seem to feel that this style of play is dishonorable. Never mind that it's a style that has kept Mexico from scoring on US soil since 2000. Never mind that Mexico has seen this style over and over again in that time and yet has never managed to find a way to beat it outside of the huge home field advantage of Azteca. Even with a largely pro-Mexican crowd on hand in Glendale, Mexico couldn't find a way to win.

If Mexico is such a better team than the US - as the Mexican team and most or all of their increasingly obnoxious fans seem to believe - don't you think they could have won one game in the US since 2000? One out of eight? Instead, it's 7-0-1 to the US, and the losing streak appears to bother Mexico so much that they stomped off the field without shaking hands or exchanging jerseys after this game, like little, petulant children.

That's what this team is. A group of spoiled brats who can't believe they can't beat a team they consider inferior. Maybe it's time for Mexico to think about the new order of CONCACAF and realize they can't just coast on their superior talent pool anymore. If they want to be top of the heap, they're going to have to work a lot harder. But in the meantime, maybe they should close their mouths for a minute and check the scoreboard.

USA 2, Mexico 0. Again.

Whatford?

I suppose we had to see that one coming. If there's one thing City seem known for - certainly in my two years following the club - it's playing down to the level of opposition. (See: Rovers, Doncaster; Chesterfield.) The game sounded like it was being played in pretty rough conditions, to be fair, but a 0-0 draw against Watford, a newly-promoted side in the relegation zone, at home, following a 3-1 dispatching of Villa? Not the game I was hoping to hear, and it sucks because weekday games are the easiest to listen to for me. Ferris and Hinchcliffe got pretty slap-happy during the broadcast, such was the level of play on the field.

That opportunity for three points having gone by the wayside, picking up a point at Old Trafford - which I think is the best anyone can hope for - becomes ever more important. You can usually throw out the records on derby day - City took four points last year despite being significantly lower in the table come season's end - but United have been playing pretty well. I suppose it would be nice if the Benfica game tomorrow were a war of attrition, although Richard Dunne says there's nothing to worry about. Even with a pretty good defense (the Wigan game excepted), though, I hope City don't think they can go far without improving their finishing.

Annoying thing about Saturday's game: kickoff is 6:45 in the morning here, and it's not going to be televised on FSC, even in tape delay. This is going to make it really hard to follow.

On the road again

Manchester City's season so far had basically been two distinct campaigns: one, the home campaign which has yet to see a defeat and features just one goal allowed (4-3-0, +6); the other, a miserable away campaign which, entering the day, had not seen a win (0-1-6) and was embodied by a miserable goal differential of -12.

Perhaps this is the start of something. City haven't necessarily lacked chances this season; it's finishing them that's been the key problem (even after today's outburst, City have just 13 goals in 15 matches). Today it wasn't an issue. Despite sitting fifth in the table, and despite playing at home, Aston Villa looked totally overmatched, especially on defense. City picked them apart, jumping to a 2-0 halftime lead and eventually winning 3-1.

Naturally, City still missed a ton of good chances, but then that's football. If they score three goals it doesn't seem fair for me to complain that they should have scored six. The point is: there are six sides left without a road win and City aren't one of them. This could just be another instance of lightning in a bottle (see: West Ham home win on 9/23, which engendered so much hope and was followed by a 1-3-2 run and two goals scored in the six games following), and the December slate is not easy:

12/4 vs. Watford
12/9 at Man U
12/17 vs. Spurs
12/23 vs. Bolton
12/26 at Sheffield U
12/30 at West Ham

Not exactly a cakewalk, is it? Sure, the Watford game should be a win (frankly, if it's not, there are much bigger concerns, aren't there?), but after that it's three road games - one the Derby - and two home games against teams that tend to give City fits. The three games in a week, the latter two on the road, isn't particularly fun-sounding either.

City's season is going to be determined by December. Currently they're on twelfth but just five points back of third - in all, eleven teams are within two wins of third place, in fact, and with Man U and Chelsea pulling well away at the top, it's the race for 3 and 4 (and to a lesser extent, 5, and maybe 6 and 7 depending on Cup results) that's going to be the most interesting for the rest of the season (not that the Man U-Chelsea tug of war won't be interesting, but, well, I hate both those clubs).

With that said, you have to look at wanting 10-14 points out of December. A lot to expect from six matches? Maybe. But if you're going to make Europe, Watford and Sheffield United have to be wins, and City have played well enough at home that you'd think they could take down one of Spurs or Bolton. That's nine right there, and if the defense stays up to snuff, one of the remaining three could easily be a draw. That's already ten. Fourteen is significantly more generous - it assumes either three home wins or a win over slumping West Ham (hardly impossible, even at Upton Park), and even then requires no more than one loss in the six, which could be a tall order. But if you ask me, ten isn't just doable, it's pretty much the least of what needs to happen if this club is going to make a push for Europe. And I really, really want to see a push for Europe.

But for the time being, let's just be happy with a road win. And Sylvain Distin's goal - my God.