You’d have to assume that Manchester City didn’t see this power shift coming. It’s been so sensible, after all.
Back in May, the club finished four points clear of Chelsea and kept Jose Mourinho’s team at a relatively comfortable distance throughout the final stretch of the title race. Since then, City has added to its squad perfectly sensibly—Bacary Sagna, Fernando, Willy Caballero, Frank Lampard and Eliaquim Mangala—to enhance a group of champions going into its second season under its excellent manager Manuel Pelligrini.
And yet here it is: five points behind Chelsea after five games into the 2014-15 campaign.
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A gap has already been opened up and now sustained. After an unexpected defeat at home to Stoke City three weeks ago, Chelsea arguably tagged City even harder this weekend—despite a dramatic Lampard equalizer—by comfortably holding off the champions on their own pitch. Whereas last season’s equivalent result (a 1-0 Chelsea win) felt momentous, this weekend’s 1-1 draw felt almost routine. Chelsea was rarely troubled in its work and in the end Mourinho was hugely dissatisfied with dropping two points, because, seemingly, he saw the chance to start pulling away.
In such circumstances, where it ends up being happy with remaining “only” five points behind its nearest rival, it would be understandable if City questioned exactly where it has gone wrong. What should it have done differently? How has Mourinho switched everything up on it like this? And when did it happen?
Well, obviously, the first thing to say is that early results like these represent a small sample size. The opening few games of a season are suggestive, not conclusive, especially given that before the Chelsea result City had the same number of points as last season at the same moment in time, and that turned out fine. City is known as a high-powered machine that tends to start slower than it finishes, so a lot could still change. And five points is only five points.
But beyond that caution with statistics there still is room to think about why there should be any kind of gap or even any small amount of evidence that Chelsea might overtake Pellegrini’s side. A five point difference remains significant in the sense that it doesn’t just appear from nowhere—and it also doesn’t just disappear without good reason when you’re behind a Mourinho side in as good form as this one.
So, naturally, the thing to do is to reassess City’s summer of sensibleness in order to discover the difference between last season’s success and the relative failure so far this time around. Here, I reckon, are the explanations for what we might be seeing in this season’s title race.
Now, whichever angle it is observed from, the business of signing Mangala to go next to Kompany in central defence, Lampard, Sagna and Caballero as strong squad players, and Fernando as an upgrade for Javi Garcia as competition in central midfield, is sensible. It makes sense, as I may have already mentioned. On City’s own terms, it represents good progress. The problem, however, is that in league football progress is not measured against your own terms—it’s measured against everyone else’s.
Football teams operate in the context of other football teams, and Chelsea wasn’t merely sensible with its signings this summer; it was kind of brilliant.
While City tidied up around the edges of its squad, Chelsea went big. Adding to that squad which finished four points off City, Mourinho brought in Diego Costa, the best striker in Europe last season, to replace the terrible Fernando Torres. He also put Cesc Fabregas next to Nemanja Matic in his midfield on top of bulking up his bench with Loic Remy and Filipe Luis. When you think about it, of course, this positions Mourinho to reverse the points deficit—this is a case of extreme improvements versus neat incremental ones.
The irony here is that Chelsea is following the City model of developing a squad at an accelerated rate. In the last six years it has usually been City that has pushed on and on in the transfer market: not one new star in a transfer window but five, or six, or seven. Now, held back by financial fair play rules that Chelsea has dealt with better, City risks being outmoded as league champion because of business standards it helped inflate.
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City has gone sensible just as Chelsea has gone big—and in football only one of those tends to win. Mourinho was ruthless in moving Cech out of his goal in favour of Thibaut Courtois, whilst Pellegrini decided against selling Yaya Toure for big money and is now seemingly watching a diminished force in his midfield every week. It all adds up.
The situation is actually reminiscent of the last time City tried to follow up a title win, under Roberto Mancini. Back then, it tried to buy a group of young players—Jack Rodwell, Scott Sinclair and Matija Nastasić—in order to start growing a team for the future. It played it conventionally sensible, you might say. But Manchester United bought Robin Van Persie instead and usurped City at the top of the league.
If that season and the first five games of this season are anything to go by—and they may not be—the lesson seems to be a little bit miserable, actually. Partly because of the ruthless culture of spending City has regularly helped to reinforce, there is no room for steady, sensible consolidation any more—or neat planning. Now, there is always someone ready to initiate a power shift by splurging money the moment you stop splurging your money.
And if that’s all right, being sensible might well have stopped being the sensible option.
Ethan Dean-Richards is a London-based writer. Follow him on Twitter.