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Man City Pinch Liverpool’s Favourite Saying After One Win

So, City get a convincing win over a Liverpool side who can’t even make the top four and just two games into the season, Mancini’s insisting they’re real title contenders. Bless him.

Forget the remaining 36 games, forget that they have to play against sides who actually have finished in the top four for years, not to mention the sides who’ll raise their game when relegation threatens and forget that they’ve won nothing at all for 34 years, after a 3-0 win against one of the poorest Liverpool sides we’ve seen in a while, Mancini thinks he’s got it in the bag.

A little naïve, no?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting it’s impossible because we are after all, talking about the richest club in the Premier League and as a Chelsea supporter, more than anyone, I appreciate the benefits money can bring, but even then I maintain that our starting (and no doubt finishing) positions aren’t comparable.

To be honest, I’m sick of hearing myself say it but the Chelsea ‘revolution’ didn’t happen the day Abramovich arrived, it was already happening. The fact is that when Roman Abramovich came to Chelsea, we weren’t a mid-table side – we were already on the way up – and winning silverware. We won the FA Cup in 1997, the League Cup and Cup Winners’ Cup in 1998, the FA Cup in 2000 – the same year we made it to the quarter finals of the Champions League. So, whilst the Sheikhs were taking over a side whose only experience of Europe would have been a pre-season friendly at best, Roman Abramovich picked up a club already in the Champions League when he arrived.

The similarity is the money, which in our case, gave us the final push we needed from being a club ‘competing’ to one that could genuinely challenge for the title. Of course, their money totally eclipses Roman’s pennies but then remembering the Chelsea owner’s impatience to see a return for his investment, you’d have to assume, that like Claudio Ranieri, the absence of a title will make Mancini this season’s ‘dead man walking’.

Chelsea won the Premier League in Roman’s second season at the club (having finished second the season before that) and Al-Fahim talked of the same, stating “We are looking to make the same kind of impact at Manchester City that has happened at Chelsea in recent years. That is what we want and we think it is achievable. The target is to finish in the top four this season and then challenge for the Premier League title next year. We know that will require serious investment, but the bids we have already made for several players demonstrate how serious we are. We want to turn City into one of the biggest football clubs there is.” Laughable and on his bike but is Mancini’s stance any different?

And yet they haven’t managed a top four finish since the Sheikhs arrival in September 2008, although going into this season, off the back of some phenomenal spending in the summer, the expectation is that despite finishing 19 points behind us last season, this is their year – or at least that’s the message splashed across the side of the buses in a city where the red half have dominated for donkey’s years.

So, the pressure is on Mancini to deliver and maybe that explains his ‘optimism’ after his first win of the season, because let’s not forget that when City did face a top four side in their opening game (and a side very new to that position), he didn’t win. What I don’t get though, is where the Sheiks think they’re going with Mancini. In an interview before yesterday’s game, Mancini was going on about needing to be as successful as possible as quickly as possible but desperation doesn’t win titles.

Mancini has got his work cut out and whilst I’m sure other manager’s would jokingly suggest they’d love the dilemma of having £91million worth of substitutes sitting out a game against Liverpool, how many of them would be able to keep that many egos happy when they’re still sat on their arses in December? That takes something special, someone with man-management skills second to none – and this is where the rest of us can breathe a sigh of relief! He’s no Jose Mourinho in that department – even if TSO is bigging him up all of a sudden.

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