El Mago, Merlin, The Magician – David Silva is all of these and more – but it was Pep Guardiola who astonished Manchester City fans by pulling the proverbial rabbit out of the hat against Crystal Palace. The City boss created his own illusion of smoke and mirrors when The Wizard from Gran Canaria suddenly appeared on the team sheet…as if by magic. Silva, City’s most influential player and, in […]

The 170th Manchester derby was a dull affair, even lacking the gloss of a blue and red paint drying competition, bereft of any deft finishing strokes. Grey, drab colourless, the 0-0 stalemate did however reveal that Manuel Pellegrini is prepared to dip into a more varied pallete when looking at the bigger picture. The Chilean ‘Engineer’ has built his managerial reputation on producing masterpieces of attacking football, with City outscoring […]

Table toppers, a 100% win rate, records tumbling left right and centre – Manchester City are emerging as a Special Force this season after a fifth Premier League win was achieved without their own SAS strike corp. Deprived of Silva, Aguero (for the most part) and Sterling, Manuel Pellegrini’s early pace setters still managed to clip the wings of Crystal Palace’s high flying Eagles – thanks to a fledgling out […]

A City team led by Mark Hughes could see the blue half of Manchester top of the Premier League table just in time for Christmas. In a bizarre twist of fate, the ex-Manchester City manager could help put his former employers in pole position to retain their title – five years and three days after he was unceremoniously sacked by the Etihad outfit. If Hughes’ Stoke City can repeat last […]

Character is a word often abused in football parlance. How often do we hear a player or a manager, a pundit or a commentator trot out how a team has shown ‘character’, simply because they’ve been a goal or two behind, staged a ‘comeback’ and earned a draw or a win? The noun is bandied around like confetti at a wedding where all the guests have taken advantage of the ‘buy […]

Happy Monday has arrived courtesy of Blue Sunday and yet another seismic shift in this, the most enthralling ever struggle, for Premier League supremacy. With less than a handful of games to go it seems any side labelled as title favourites suddenly develops a case of the shakes – the tectonic plates of the PL moving beneath their feet. Having been written off, vilified and then virtually ignored in recent days, […]

What, with the demise of  that ‘decent man’ David Moyes, preparations for Queen Brenda’s coronation and the onset of the ‘Giggs Era’, it’s little wonder that a team who could yet be the champions of England have been absent from the scrutiny of the impartial football media. Granted, by Sunday evening I could be fully certified and carted off to the nearest sanatorium but, as things stand, if Jose Mourinho’s […]

Manchester City didn’t run up a cricket score when beating Crystal Palace 1-0, but Edin Dzeko did something that has eluded most of England’s batsmen during the ill-fated Ashes series. The enigmatic striker completed a half-century when his sizzling shot secured three hard earned points and took him to a 50-goal personal milestone in City colours. Dzeko continues to delight and frustrate City’s fans – not always in equal measure. […]

With 16 Premier League points safely gathered from a possible 18 this month, City have to overcome a rejuvenated Crystal Palace to round off the year in style with a 10-out-of-10 home wins record. Red Hot Chilean Manuel Pellegrini, will want to sustain City’s winning ways as the title favourites seek to surpass the 15-home game winning streak, established when Roberto Mancini’s side won the Premier League in 2011-12. Now, […]