Manager: Manuel Pellegrini
Last season: Champions
Major signings: Willy Caballero (Undisclosed, Malaga), Fernando (£12m, Porto), Bacary Sagna (Free, Arsenal), Frank Lampard (Loan, New York City FC).
Players out: Gareth Barry (Free, Everton), Joleon Lescott (Free, WBA), Costel Pantilimon (Free, Sunderland), Jack Rodwell (£10m, Sunderland).
Expectations: Surely progress in the Champions League will be a priority, but they will want to retain their title too.
Looking at their transfer business so far, it looks like Manuel Pellegrini is pretty happy with his squad. And why not, as they were clearly the best team in the league last year. In the end they won the title by just two points but they were the most consistent and effective team over the campaign by quite a distance.
Question is, can standing relatively still keep them ahead of the pack? Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have definitely improved in the off-season, so you’d have to imagine that City will need to up their game to win the title again.
After the drama of ‘Cake-gate’, Yaya Toure is back in the fold, a huge boost to the squad, and on the evidence of pre-season Stefan Jovetic looks like that most cliched of returning injured stars, the ‘just like a new signing’ player. Another player who has looked sensational in the warm-up games has been Jesus Navas, and if he can hit his top form, City may have the best winger in the league on their hands too.
Despite playing a much more attacking game than they did under Roberto Mancini, City were miserly in defence last term and the addition of a keeper to compete with Joe Hart plus the addition of Bacary Sagna makes them even deeper in that sector. Up front, a full season out of Sergio Aguero (who only played just over half their league games last term) would also be a huge plus.
As it stands, City are taking the ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ method. We all know they have the money to splash if they need to, and they may yet need to do so in January, but their squad is probably the most talented in the league, so they are still the team to beat.
Irish angle: Young midfielder Jack Byrne has been starring for City’s Elite Development Squad for over a year now and at 18 he is already playing for the Irish U21 side. There is a chance we may see him at some stage this season for the senior team, perhaps in the Cups.
Byrne’s EDS team-mate Ian Lawlor is one of the most highly touted young keepers in the game. It will be hard for the 6’4″ Dub to make it into the senior team, but he is a name we will all get to know real soon, in City blue or in another team’s colours.
If they were a fictional character… Emmet from The LEGO Movie. As it stands, EVERYTHING IS AWESOME but City may have to learn how to adapt to some new, stronger challenges this year, especially from a fearsome looking Chelsea. Can they reconfigure their existing parts to be just as effective as last year?
Where will they end up? Definitely in the top two, but we can’t be more precise than that.
