I did it last season, here are the results and so it’s ‘neck on the block'
time again…
Our fixtures &
predicted outcomes
August
Stoke City (H) W
September
Arsenal (A) D
Chelsea (H) WArsenal (A) D
October
Aston Villa (A) W
Tottenham Hotspur (H) WAston Villa (A) W
West Ham United (A) W
November
Manyoo (H) D
Manyoo (H) D
Southampton (A) W
December
Everton (H) W
West Bromwich Albion (A) W
January
Sunderland (H) W
Everton (A) LArsenal (H) W
West Bromwich
Crystal Place
West Ham United (H) W
Aston Villa (H) W
May
Tottenham
Hotspur (A) DQueen Park Rangers (H) W
Southampton (H) W
Win: 26
Draw: 8
Lose: 4
That would leave us with, ironically, 86 points; the exact same number as our title-winning season last season. Is that enough to defend our title? Well I would say that with the competition being even stronger this season the other challengers will, I’m sure, take more points off each other...and so I’m gonna say, “Yes”; City to win the league again this season!
 |
| Minus Pantilimon and in different shirts of course... |
Where we drop points
What might be quite striking to you when looking at the
predictions at the start of the season is that I’ve given us “just” 8 point from a possible 12 in the
opening 4 games. Oooo…it’ll have many
crying out, “It’s all over for City!”, that’s for sure.
With extended breaks for some of our main players and with Liverpool being right up
for early revenge; I can just see this one being a real tuffy for us. I’ve
got a strong feeling that we’ll share the points at our first home game.
Arsenal away too is a hell
of a fixture to have so early on. The Gunners are notoriously quick & good
starters and buoyed by the signing of Sanchez;
we’ll need to play our ‘A’ game to get a point at the Emirates that’s for sure.
But because I’ve resisted the urge to go all ‘new-season-optimistic’
with my early games predictions; this is partly why I feel that an 86-point,
title-winning tally is a realistic and fairly accurate one.
A good run of 5 back-to-back wins to follow – including a home win to Chelsea
This’ll soon have the pundits crying, once more, “Disaster!”; as I think old ‘arry will then ‘do a number’ on us on the compact pitch of
But fear not my Blue friends; we’re about to go on a 9-game
unbeaten run. Only ffffff…lippin’ Sunderland will, once
again I’m quite sure, frustrate us at the Stadium of Light. A point-blip in an otherwise excellent winning spell for us.
The icy season of January, however, might see us slip up a
little bit.
Aside from quick revenge on the Black Cats in our first game
of 2015 – along with a good home win
against now-fading, inconsistent and injury laden Arsenal - Everton away this-season-round will most
likely come back to bite us. Chelsea
January sees us gain
just 6 points from a possible 12.
February too is a mixed bag. The two home games see 6 points
but I’m going for Stoke to ‘do a Stoke’ and irritate
us on their own patch. And like Chelsea , I think
Liverpool won’t ‘slip up’ this time.
Happy new year, hey..?
Bouncebackability!
And beware the ides of March my little
opposition friends…
March - to the end of the season - will bring with just one
defeat, two draws and 8 wins. Put another way, that’s 26 from the final 33
points, which will push us to that magical and title-winning 86!
There ya go…no need to turn up at the Etihad this season; no
need to turn on the TV nor the radio. You don’t even have to buy a newspaper OR
look at the Internet…apart from my Blog of course! It’s
all done for you in one nice, neat package.
The cups
I wanted the League Cup last season, I really did. Why? Well, simply put, I’d just not seen
us win it before (since I’ve been a season ticket holder) and I wanted it WAY
more than the F.A. Cup, which I’d seen us win
under Mancini.
In fact, and if
this warms your cockles, I actually predicted us winning the league AND League
Cup last season…and
didn’t put a flippin’ bet on!
But this time I
think our Engineer will put slightly less
resource into this competition and unless our second & third string players pull
something special out of the hat; I think we’ll go out after a few rounds…perhaps
getting to the quarter final at best.
And although I do believe
our manager when he often comes out with the statement that he wants to win every
game and every competition – something
we were close to doing competition-wise at one, fairly advanced stage last
season – ‘the quarters’ is probably about right for this cup-competition
this time round.
But it’s ‘Wembley here we come’ (again) for this one!
Right…the Champions League. Regular readers will possibly know
that I see ‘all things domestic’ as being the more important one for us (still)
at our stage of development. It certainly doesn’t pass me by the importance of
this competition; ‘the big names’ all want to play in teams that compete well in
this one and, of course, this is where most of the money and world-wide
prestige comes from.
And, yes, we are getting close to being
regulars at the top, TOP table of European football.
However, the great
teams are consistent at home first and although 1 F.A. Cup, a League Cup and 2
league titles in 4 seasons is AMAZING in the life of any long-suffering
Manchester City fan; back-to-back league titles and continuing success in England
is what we should be striving for first & foremost in my humble opinion.
Makes me wonder why I’ve opted out (for the
first ever time) of the League & F.A. Cup schemes and have stayed in the
Champions League scheme this season coming…
Having said that,
we must continue to be strong in Europe of
course and I would fully expect us to progress from the group stages. Success
in Europe this season coming looks like this
for me:
-
Finish
TOP of the group this time
-
Progress
beyond the first of our 2-legged knock-out stage games.
Whatever we do
after that should be seen as an exciting bonus…and it SHOULD’T, Messrs Pellegrini, Soriano, Begiristain & Khaldoon,
get in the way of our defence of the Premier League
title!
Will you have that?
I certainly will…
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