Masters of our own downfall?

The Following was sent in by Ryan Corless

Despite beating Chelsea twice, Arsenal once, and losing only 7 times all season, it turned out to be another season of disappointment and ultimately misery for the City faithful. After failing to learn from our mistakes one too many times, we endured three late losses against our fierce rivals from over the road. A run of eight straight draws did nothing to help our push for a top 4 place. The misery was confirmed on the last Wednesday of the season, when Spurs came to Eastlands and did what they do best; beat City.

Our problems began in September, with an on fire Emmanuel Adebayor stupidly getting himself banned for a number of games after scoring four times in his first four games. A moment that was highly significant in our pursuit of 4th place, as one can only wonder how well Adebayor would have done in a Blue shirt given a consistent run of games. However, up stepped Carlos Tevez in an attempt to show City why we invested £25million on him in the first place, with a particularly impressive December for the small Argentine, bagging 8 goals in 7 games.

Slowly and steadily we grew into a team that genuinely looked capable of breaking the top 4 threshold, a convincing 3-0 win against Wolves was particularly impressive. But spineless performances against Everton at Goodison Park and Hull at the KC stadium meant it was another 6 points dropped in a season where every point would turn out to be vital.

However, come January we were still in a position where winning both domestic cups was possible, with the semi-final against United high on our list of priority. A less than convincing 2-1 win at Eastlands was enough to see us take an advantage to Old Trafford, but any City watching the game that night knew we suffered a beating in the latter stages of the second half and to take a lead to the second leg was fortunate to say the least. Still, in typical City fashion, we decided to give up our chances of a famous semi-final win in the last minute of the game, with Wayne Shrek scoring a painful goal for Blues all over to have to watch.

A disappointing loss to Stoke away in the FA Cup fifth round replay followed, with Adebayor getting sent off for a less than clever elbow, just after the Togolese striker had begin to re-create the form that saw him become an instant hit at City in the first four games of the campaign. Another mountain to climb for City, a mountain that we climbed fairly well, with an unbelievable win at Stamford Bridge following the FA cup exit. Unfortunately we didn’t follow the win at the would-be champions up with a great month after drawing to Sunderland and losing at home to Everton.

Crushing victories over Burnley and Birmingham followed in April, but our inability to accept a point in the fourth Manchester derby of the season meant another difficult pill to swallow.

Eventually, the same arrogance cost us any chance of a last-day battle off with Spurs for 4th place, a battle off that, we would have come out on top of, had we settled for a point in a game that we were clearly second best in. Despite an unusual amount of optimism surrounding the City of Manchester before the game, City failed to put in a performance, with several players fading despite being such a big part of the previous 36 games, as it was, Peter Crouch scored a scrappy goal which took our London rivals to the Champion’s League ahead of us, in true City fashion, we again waited until the last 10 minutes to scupper our chances of success.

Overall, due to our own over-estimation of our ability in too many games, it was disappointment for our beloved Blues and it meant another season without silverware. There were definitely positives though, with City breaking all sorts of records along the way, given a little bit more consistency, fewer minutes added on in Manchester derbies, and fewer stamps to the faces of Dutch players, next season could prove to be the one where we crack the top 4 and maybe snatch a domestic cup along the way.

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