Yes and no. A lot of people were completely willing to write us off on the basis of last season saying that we would barely scrape Top 4 when I personally knew from the start we definitely were going to compete at a much higher level this time around, but at the same time, I don’t think we’re capable of going the distance right now. Arsenal aren’t as exciting but their mentality looks a lot better and City are always a monster in the second half of the season, especially once KDB comes back from injury

Our main issue is that we lack a proper holding midfielder. We have players who can play in that position but we lack a player like Rodri or even Declan Rice. It leaves us way too open at the back and vulnerable to fast counter attacks since Trent is constantly bombing forward and Alisson, Van Dijk & Matip/Konate can only do so much

As we saw against Luton away and even Everton at Anfield, we really struggle against low blocks. We find it difficult to break them down and when we try and push for a winner, it leaves us open at the back with two centre backs caught out because they were trying to score a header from a setpiece at the other end of the pitch, two fullbacks who’s best attributes doesn’t consist of defending and a #8 playing as a #6 as our main line of defense. We’ve been mostly bailed out so far as we saw yesterday but like Arsenal last year in some respects, I have a feeling it will catch up to us at some point

Bangers only it seems

3 bangers to try and cancel out our worst home performance of the season so far. I give up at this point

Edit: 4 bangers then lmao

🤨

It would be some comeback story for Van Dijk to have one of the best ever primes a centre back ever had from 2018-2020, pick up an ACL injury that’s put him out for a year, go back to having a brilliant 21/22 season, then having a very poor 22/23 season with people calling him finished and then going on to hit world class levels again

I think people are more angry about where the money comes from (which wasn’t an issue when Liverpool and United dominated respectively) and the fact that regardless of spending a lot of money, there is growing evidence that City have been ignoring the existing financial rules for years anyway

I don’t want to be that guy but this is exactly what Chelsea were doing ten years ago under Abramovich

City in 2023 and Chelsea in 2013 have a lot of similarities when you think about it. Clubs that were largely irrelevant at the very top level for a long time and then both clubs were bought by foreign entities where the money being funnelled into both clubs attracted a lot of criticism due to the questionable morals that the owners represented

Both clubs started to immediately find success not long after the respective takeovers and just after winning the European cup for the first time, both clubs are starting to cement themselves as established football clubs amongst younger generations

I’m sorry but you’ll never be able to convince me that City legitimately overtook United as a financial giant in the span of a decade. Obviously they’ve grown in recent years and will continue to do so but to go from where they were in 2008 to now in such a quick amount of time? I’m not buying that