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Nigel DeJong believes City can win the title this season, and there's nothing wrong with having that ambition, and there's nothing wrong with Mancini instilling that ambition in the team, but our Sir Kenneth thinks it may be a step too far;

"Overall my opinion is still the same as it was when Hughes was in charge. Whatever the manager might be doing, we still don't quite have the talent on the pitch yet that can really blaze a trail to the top the Premiership. We're close, I agree with DeJong on that; we perhaps at this point have an outside chance of second or even first.


This man might make a difference yet

Mancini is certainly getting a lot more out of the current players (the addition of Vieira might turn out to be very important) but I want to see more improvement - more zip - in our passing and movement. We can shift the ball around like the Chelseas and Arsenals of this world part of the time, but we still struggle to sustain it across whole games and thereby stamp our authority on matches. Even against Blackburn there was (at times) a little too much head tennis and pass backs to Given for my liking. A better opponent would have sensed our lack of concentration in the second half and had a go at us.

Perhaps a bigger obstacle is our lack of firepower. Tevez is doing a superb job, but I don't really see him as an out-and-out striker. Lose him to injury and we'll be resting our hopes on Roque Santa Cruz who has yet to show anything of his Blackburn form and Adebayor who has seemed to be lacking in motivation (and sadly now has other reasons to be distracted...)

If Chelsea win the Prem this season it will have a lot to do with Drogba and Anelka - pace and lethal finishing by the bucket load. We don't have anything to quite match them yet. Pure strikers are important to winning championships. Even Sour Alex admitted this week that the rag's chances of retaining the Premiership depended a lot on Rooney.

All we can do is make sure we keep winning games against mid and lower table opposition (as we have been doing since Mancini's arrival) and keep racking up the 'bread and butter' points to stay in contention. Then it will come down to taking points off the 'top dogs' and our near rivals like Spurs and Villa to decide whether we snatch glory or not.

When asked about City's Premiership chances during the Blackburn game TV commentary Paul Walsh (whose opinion I respect) said that on average he didn't think City were playing football that was appreciably better than Spurs or Villa. I'm inclined to agree with that. There's still a lot that can happen with half a season to go and the transfer window open - so who knows what we might achieve - but at the moment I'll be very, very happy with fourth or third place.
~Sir Kenneth~

Third place and a Cup would be fantastic, I can't see us winning the title this season as too many "easy" points have already been dropped for my liking. The only chance is if Chelsea really go flat while Drogba and Essien are away and we take full advantage with our relatively straightforward fixtures up to the Liverpool home match.
~fatboyslimming~