Shity City

Manchester City fans are busy rejoicing their 3 nil victory over Arsenal in Carling Cup play today, but what the rest of the soccer world know is that Manchester City is one of the biggest disappointments of this year. Our readership certainly already knows about City's girth of big name summer signings, and with names like Lescott and Tevez you would think the Real Madrid of England would at least have secured itself a top four spot. Why has this club with so much power recently set a record for the most consecutive draws? It's quite simple, Manchester city is a fantastic example of how a team failed to form a cohesive unit despite the immense individual talent. The thing which sets Manchester city apart from other teams which lack cohesiveness, such as Argentina and to a lesser degree Real Madrid, is that the front of the team seems to understand the concept of team work while the back seems to be totally ignorant of it. Up front, Craig Bellemy and Emmanual Adebayor are both performing up to par, with five goals a piece, while Tevez, Wright Phillips, and Petrov have all gotten on the score sheet this season. On the whole the Citizen's front behaves much like a offense of its caliber should, and City have shown that they can easily score 3 goals in a match. Unfortunately City's defense allows as many goals as the offense scores. Most notable is the failure of communication between City's defenders, who often leave men unmarked, shift at unreasonable times, and generally allow runs into the box too often. Kolo Toure and Joleon Lescott gave the perfect example of this when their lax defending allowed Burnley 3 second half goals in their draw away to City. Replays of Burnley's second goal show Lescott cooley walking through the box while behind him Steven Fletcher makes a run towards the net, resulting in a second goal. Lescott and Toure are not bad players, each of them proved themselves at Everton and Arsenal respectively before their move to Manchester. Hughes is going to need to realize that just because he hired top players, doesnt mean their styles are suited to one another. And while he seems to have struck a winning formula up front, he would be wise to chase a big name defensive signing this winter, one who can add some much needed cohesiveness to a messy defense.