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.