Herb wrote:My honest thoughts on this season are that: -
Premiership; we've had a few knocks but still held ourselves up as being a notable team in the premiership - it isn't that we haven't competed, with the way we've played (including the odd bad bit) we'd have been vying for top place in many previous seasons but the rags have had an exceptional season this year that they will find difficult to repeat.
Despite this, we're still up above every other team in England and there's no shame in that position - indeed, much to be proud of.
Champions League; Well, fact of the matter is that we were drawn into perhaps the strongest group that the competition has ever seen and while we'd have liked to have gone further in the competition we didn't quite have the experience to do so.
Is that an issue? Not to me it's not because I can't remember any other English club ever doing particularly well in the CL without being in there for a number of years. Added to that, there isn't another English team that would've survived that group and that includes the rags.
Moving forward, we've added to our european experience and we'll have another tilt next season with the benefit of recent learning.
League Cup; As with all other top flight clubs, it's a distraction and we simply didn't want to be in it.
FA Cup; Had to pit ourselves against a series of lesser teams that were looking to upset us but dealt with them all with panache culminating in a game at wembley against a strong chelsea side which we slapped aside to book our place in our second FAC final in 3 years.
Overall; Regardless of massive 'anti-City' media pressure (not helped by taggart upping his access for pro-rag reporting strategy - which needs a legal investigation) we've stayed strong as a club and strong (except for a few drama queens) as fans. We've proven that we have staying power in the upper echelons of the PL to the degree that rag fans almost expect to get slapped silly by us at the swamp. Consistency has been our real issue and problems in that area were exacerbated by the ACoN (Yaya really is a key component) and a litany of repeated injuries to both fringe and key players (I won't list them but Aguero & Kompany injuries were perhaps the difference this year).
Club wide, we've continued to progress in the development of a world class training academy, added to the senior management team and secured new longterm sponsors.
I did wish for more from the season (I always want us to win everything!) but in realistic terms it's actually been a good season that could get better if we can stick another top notch trophy in the cabinet - roll on the FAC final eh?
Nice balanced view overall. Not sure that the rags had that good a season. If we had won 3 or 4 of our draws the pressure would still be on the rags and even the rag fans where I work don't argue when I say they choked when the pressure was on at the end of last season. If we keep progressing it won't be too long before the top players want Man City on their c.v. like Van Persie did with the rags. Champions League is a 10 year project IMO.
