MANCHESTER CITY 1 CSKA MOSCOW 2: MATCH REPORT

City are some way below the high levels of performance we reached last season. The direct comparison with last season’s 5-2 win over the same opponents best illustrates how far we have fallen. There are a number of reasons for this drop in performance. Last season was an 11 month season with the World Cup and some of our players are jaded as a consequence. Furthermore, the World Cup has also meant that many of our players have had disrupted pre-seasons, and this seems to have affected our fitness more than other clubs. We don’t have the same energy levels and we are not pressing far up the field anywhere near as much as we did last season. This could partly be down also to a lack of application and commitment. As well as this, Pellegrini’s naive persistence in 4-4-2 in games against the best sides in the Premier League and particularly in Europe has seen us outnumbered in midfield and our confidence has ebbed away. Added to this, with few exceptions, we don’t seem to truly believe in ourselves in Europe ever since we have qualified for the Champions League.

The manager and the players need to get together and take a look at themselves and make sure they perform far better than this.

Whilst we shouldn’t give up just yet on the so-called Champions League, the Premier League has always been more important to most City fans, and we should focus on that primarily. We are on a bad run of 3 defeats in 4 games. We must raise our level of performance significantly and beat QPR on Saturday.

 Goals:
MCFC: Yaya Toure: 6
CSKA: Doumbia 2, 34

Att: 45,143