#360view: Manchester City’s core grown in UCL yet still look stunted

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  • Europe despair: Manchester City.

    Manchester City in Europe: A mystery within an enigma trapped inside a labyrinth.

    Quite how a team that looks so consistently ruthless in the Premier League can be dramatically transformed into a meek and nervous outfit when faced with continent competition, is a question few, if any, have been able to provide any credible and coherent answers to.

    As each season passes the belief has been that this group of players – especially the core of the likes of Joe Hart, Vincent Kompany, Yaya Toure, David Silva and Sergio Aguero – will grow in experience and eventually stamp their authority on games against Europe’s finest, like they do so regularly within the English top flight. 

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    Yet, so far, and admittedly it’s a small sample size, it’s been more of the same.

    Against Juventus, a side in a suspect run of form and struggling to find any great cohesion after a summer of frenzied transfer activity both in and out of the club, City folded from a position of superiority to lose a game they really should have won. 

    It says something about their Euro-phobic approach that in their 28 games in the Champions League since earning the ticket to world football’s most elite club, they have won just 10.

    That, given the strength of investment at the Etihad Stadium and calibre of player clad in sky blue, is a damning indictment of the fragility that permeates this team.

    It’s a fragility that we’ve also seen in the Premier League in the wake of the Juve defeat as back-to-back defeats to West Ham and then Tottenham have rendered any fears of them running away with the title this season horribly premature.

    A fortnight ago City would have looked to tonight’s game in Monchengladbach as a welcome release. With six straight defeats and a series of scratched heads how Die Fohlen had fallen from finishing third last term to bottom, they would have effectively been there for the taking.

    But now they are reinvigorated under youth team coach Andre Schubert, who may not possess any top-flight credentials but has certainly restored morale and given a talented group of players a sense of purpose. What did seem a walkover now seems a worry for City.

    Preparations have been further clouded by the loss of captain Vincent Kompany to injury.

    Calamitous he may have been last season but this term he’s returned to some semblance of his usual inspirational self.

    His leadership is everything that City need to weather this squall before it breaks out into a full-blown storm.

    But in his absence what Manuel Pellegrini absolutely needs is the remaining members of his aforementioned core to come to the fore. 

    Between them, in City colours, Hart, Toure, Silva and Aguero have 99 Champions League appearances (notwithstanding the 35 Yaya made as a Barcelona and Olympiakos player and 19 for Silva at Valencia and 17 for Aguero at Atletico) and these sort of games should be meat and drink for them. Instead they’re always difficult to digest.

    Toure and Aguero, in many ways, encapsulate City. When they’re at their very best as individuals they turn Pellegrini’s side into one resembling the very finest in Europe. At their worst – in Toure’s case all to often over the last 18 months – they appear lost and disinterested. 

    Defeat tonight is by no means a disaster but City need to start showing some maturity in the competition.

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