Can we finally drop the ‘Typical City’ tag?

Written by: RyanCorless

0tweetsretweet

1937 – Manchester City win the first division title for the first time in their history.
1938 – Manchester City are relegated from the first division, despite scoring more goals than any team in the division.

Typical City.

For years now supporting City has been a rollercoaster ride, a bit like the Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach with a lot more ups and downs. City never fail when it comes to providing their supporters with more contrasting emotions than any other team in England, I’d argue even the world. It’s not all bad though, only City could come from 3 goals down away from home, with 10 men, with their best striker injured to win 4-3 in the last minute of the game. The reward – getting beat by our fiercest rivals Manchester United in the next round.

Only City could inflict the only defeat on a seemingly invincible Chelsea side in the 2004/2005 campaign, only to be beaten by Oldham Athletic in the same season. How many teams are beaten by a goal that deflects on a balloon, a balloon which was thrown onto the pitch by one of the fans who was on the wrong end of the result! Although I must admit Liverpool’s beach ball fiasco away at Sunderland this year did resemble a similar circumstance.

But for how long can we go along having ‘Typical City’ moments? Yes, it’s incredibly entertaining being a Blue, one of the many reasons I chose to support the Blues over the Reds as a boy growing up in a predominantly Red area. But sometimes it just gets tiring watching another disappointing even and listening to the words ‘Typical City’ muttered from many different mouths.

This season we saw our team blow away the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal, yet stumble at home to the likes of Burnley and Hull, who also beat us away. Both teams were relegated come May, whereas Chelsea (the team we completed a double over) finished top of the league.

But imagine, if we shook off the typical City tag? It might lead to less entertaining seasons in terms of ups and downs, but surely with the club at the current stage of development it’s at, we’d see a team that everyone could rely on. A team that could deliver wins where expected, instead of stumbling against minnows.

A lot of our stumbles are psychological though, a lot of fans (myself included) often sit at a match thinking ‘how can we cock this one up?’ Just this season, as I stood at Turf Moor, City leading 5-0 before half-time, a bloke turned round to me and said;
“If we get 6 I think it’s a guaranteed win”, it might sound foolish, but it’s a comment that I whole-heartedly agreed with, I genuinely stood in the pouring ran believing we could in fact throw away a 5 goal lead, adding another ‘Typical City’ moment to our illustrious history. It rained extremely heavily that day, and in that second half I saw the game being called off, only for it to be replayed, with us probably losing 1-0. Instead the game finished 6-1 and there was no sign of ‘Typical City’.

Now can we drop the ‘Typical City’ tag? I’m guilty of applying it a lot too, it’s hard not to watching City at times. But now I feel if we can finally rid the tag from ourselves we can go onto to fulfil the expectations thrust upon us in recent years, and go on to do great things.

I pray for a season where we beat the likes of Blackpool home and away – because we should. I pray for a season where we are not knocked out by lower league opposition in a domestic cup – because we shouldn’t be. I pray for a season with no regrets, and no ‘what ifs’. The Blue Moon is always rising and it’s simply a matter of time because this club goes on to emulate the form which saw us becoming such a reputable club in the first place.

If you enjoyed this piece, Why not try one of these?

Is The Transition Too Hard To Make? by RyanCorless on May 17th, 2010
Tuesday, December 8th, 1998 – Manchester City lose 2-1 at home to Mansfield Town in the Auto Windscreens Shields Trophy in front of Maine Road’s lowest ever crowd, an embarrassingly low 3007 people.

Are Loans the New Graveyard for Out-of-Favour Footballers? by RyanCorless on May 22nd, 2010
A summer full of exciting transfer activity soon awaits us, with City rumoured to be in for a number of top class players over the next few months.

Sign up to MCFCForum.com today! by BlueWolfie on May 8th, 2010
What you are reading here is MCFCForum’s blog; a way that enables us to let everyone out there know we exist, but also to allow our members to get their points of view across to a much wider audience.

Are Loans the New Graveyard for Out-of-Favour Footballers?

A summer full of exciting transfer activity soon awaits us, with City rumoured to be in for a number of top class players over the next few months. However, to make room for the new ‘stars’ at Eastlands, departures will inevitably occur.

Over the years at City we’ve seen a number of players go out on loan, perhaps because they are young and could do with experience holding down a first team place, or because the competition is too fierce to break into the Blue’s starting 11.

However, in today’s day and age it’s almost as if a loan move away from the club signals that a player’s career at the City of Manchester Stadium is swiftly coming to end. There used to be a time where a young, bright footballer would be loaned out to a team who were maybe a few divisions lower to give them an opportunity to experience first team football. Usually they would then return with some useful experience under their belt and make an attempt to stamp their mark on the first team. Whereas today, we see players being loaned out frequently, and never returning to try and make a name for themselves at City.

To read the rest of Ryan's piece, please visit our new Website - http://www.mcfcforum.com Where you can find numerious more articles and our new forums.

http://www.mfcforum.com

Writers Needed

With the new season fast approaching, MCFCForum are looking to expand our current writing team to allow us to cover more aspects of our beloved City.

All Articles will be submitted onto our new Website which is linked with the news portal NewsNow.

Anyone who is interested, please remember that your articles will be a gateway to our forum, and so therefore they must be written well (grammar, punctuation, etc). Obviously, they must be Manchester City based, but other than that there are no barriers as to the actual content.

You will be fully accredited for your work on the Website and it will also be pinned within our forums for a period for maximum exposure.

Anyone who is interested please PM me on our forums or leave a comment below, preferably with a piece for review so we know what to expect from you in the future.

MCFCForum

New Forums Launched

The team at MCFCForum.com are pleased to announce that our new forums have been launched here - http://www.mcfcforum.com/forums

Despite being a relatively new community, we have continued to grow at a swift rate and therefore it was nessacery to make this move to enable us to continue this growth.

Unfortunately existing members will have to re-register as we weren’t able to acquire the old database from our old forum providers.

To do so, please visit: MCFCForum Register

The forum is still new and we will be introducing new features in due time such as an Arcade, so please bare with us.

Hope to see you over there soon.

MCFCForum Team.

£20 Mil-lio-ner

Written by: YJMcFc

0tweetsretweet

As the rumours continue to spread through forums and newspapers regarding players such as Ibrahimovic, Boateng, Gerrard and Torres, it is hard to think that Sky Sports News can ignore these interesting deals. However they have suddenly “broke” the story surrounding Aston Villa midfielder James Milner and his potential move to Manchester City for £20 million.

If we, as City fans, were to of asked each other who they would have liked to sign during the Summer, surely they would not have mentioned Milner. However it is coming clear that Bobby Mancini is definitely interested in signing the young-ish England player, who currently has seven caps at senior level for his country.

So is this deal a goody or a bady? In my own opinion I think it’s quite good, but my father, who is a life long City fan, thinks that this will be the beginning of Mancini’s downfall. (I told him to shag off). I think this is a yet another good signing by Roberto. I like the way he attempts to bring the best out of the youth that he see’s around him ie. Ibrahim etc. With Milner only being at 24, he still has a lot of time to progress which I feel Mancini can help with. Also, being along side other England internationals such as Adam Johnson and Gareth Barry, he is sure to fit right into the squad.

So, will this deal go ahead and when will it happen? Well, if you were to believe all the trolox you hear on forums then you would of expected this to happen today (19 May). Unfortunately that isn’t the case. However, the deals may be done already and not announced. An anonymous source has said the following:

“I believe 2 are done deals that will be announced early next week – possibly Wednesday!”.

This could be in relation to Milner and the other signing Jerome Boateng from Hamburg. I will say this yet again, this summer is going to be absolutely amazing. You have my word.

If you enjoyed this then please visit our new site Http://www.mcfcforum.com

Is The Transition Too Hard To Make?

Tuesday, December 8th, 1998 – Manchester City lose 2-1 at home to Mansfield Town in the Auto Windscreens Shields Trophy in front of Maine Road’s lowest ever crowd, an embarrassingly low 3007 people.

Sunday, May 9th, 2010 – Manchester City draw 1-1 away at Upton Park, home of West Ham United. The draw completed a season where City broke countless records, including their highest ever points tally in the Premier League, as well as their highest ever league finish in the same competition.

Which one do you prefer? The obvious answer would be the second scenario, but it’s almost as if for some Blues being stuck in the 3rd tier of English football, struggling away to the likes of Wycombe was a more enjoyable experience all round.

To read the rest of this post please visit :http://www.mcfcforum.com/?p=391

Should you stay or should you go?

The Following was sent in by Ryan Corless

Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard, Ashley Young, Gabriel Agbonlahor and  Mario Ballotelli – just five of the supposed names on City’s summer shopping list. A list so exciting that we forget that players will be going the other way too. A number of rumours regarding players that already wear the sky blue shirt have surfaced over the coming weeks; rumours that question whether or not they have a future at the club.

Some names are more obvious than others, for example it looks like strikers Jo, Felipe Caicedo, Valeri Bojinov and Benjani, as well as Bulgarian midfielder Martin Petrov may have played their last games for the Blues. But there are names that may be a little harder to call for the City faithful; Craig Bellamy, Emmanuel Adebayor, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Stephen Ireland and Robinho all find their names thrust into the media spotlight linking them with moves away from Eastlands.

After a truly remarkable effort this year, it would be hard to see Craig Bellamy anywhere but the City of Manchester stadium come September. Yet still rumours link ‘Bellers’ with a move away to Goodison Park, home of Everton. After an impressive season with City though, surely the hopes of the supporters are that Craig will be playing his football in sky blue and not a darker shade of blue next term.
Verdict – will still be a City player come next season

After a somewhat controversial season, Togolese striker Emmanuel Adebayor finished with 14 goals in 26 starts. However, a so-called lazy attitude and lack of interest has led to some City fans questioning whether Ade will still be playing his football for us next season. A silly stamp to the face of Robin Van Persie as well as a red card away at Stoke in the FA Cup meant that Ade didn’t get the run of games that City fans would have liked to see, problems that were all of his own making. Sometimes though, it is easy to forget that the 6’3 target man was involved in a horrific gun-attack in January, an event so terrifying that Emmanuel himself said he was finding it difficult to recover from. Given a clean run of games and less controversy could Ade go on to prove a lot of Blues wrong with a better season next year?
Verdict – will still be a City player come next season

A fan-favourite for many years now, Shaun Wright-Phillips hasn’t enjoyed his best season for the Blues, struggling to get a decent run of games in the first team, something that wasn’t made easier by the January arrival of Adam Johnson, not to mention the outstanding consistency of Craig Bellamy. It could well be that Shaun wishes to play more first-team football, and may look elsewhere to do so, but if the England winger can accept that only top-class performances will allow him a stretch of games – something which he is very capable of producing, then City are likely to offer him the chance of staying at Eastlands.
Verdict – may be sold if the price is right

After an impressive season in 2008/09, scoring 13 goals, the pressure and expectation was on Stephen Ireland to perform. It’s a fair comment to say however, that it just hasn’t been Superman’s year. Struggling to perform consistently enough to hold down a first-team place, with competition from the likes of Nigel De Jong, Gareth Barry and Patrick Vieira, Stephen has had a frustrating year with City. However, in the season prior to this, we saw Stevie play some magnificent stuff, which had some Blues branding him our very own Steven Gerrard in the making. Given a bit more luck next year, City fans all over will be hoping that Ireland can re-produce the form that made them think so highly of him a year ago – if, that is, the Irish midfielder is still here.
Verdict – may be sold, if the price is right

In August 2008, we saw the arrival of a Brazilian forward, an arrival that excited every Blue on the planet. With a debut goal against Chelsea, Robinho couldn’t have wished to a better start to his City career, but a lack of determination away from home meant that Robbie was the target of much stick from the City faithful. After a long January in which rumours surfaced that Robinho was about to exit from the club, he was loaned to Santos. A loan that, he said; he would be happy to extend, given the chance. Despite saying he left City on good terms it looks as though the Brazilian has no desire to return to Manchester and may well have played his last game from the Blues.
Verdict – has played his last game for City

Whatever happens it is bound to be a busy transfer window this summer, with players coming to the club, as well as players departing. Some may say it is harder now than any other time in the Blue’s history to predict the starting line-up for 3 months onwards from this day.

Have an opinion? Want to discuss this further? Come and discuss this piece at MCFC Forum