Manchester City started the season as defending champions and had a pretty strong look about themselves after keeping the squad pretty much intact, while adding a few dependable players who added further depth and brought more options. The start of the season was rather mixed as an excellent win over Liverpool at home in the second week of the campaign was followed by a rather inexplicable and shocking loss at home to Stoke. Manuel Pellegrini’s men seemed a bit slow to get things going in these early weeks of the season and were already five points behind Chelsea when the two main title rivals met in September. City were heading for what was a costly loss, a man down and trailing, but a late strike by Frank Lampard earned a 1:1 draw. The team’s form remained rather inconsistent and patchy over the autumn, some excellent performances like a 4:1 hammering of Tottenham, followed by loose and careless showings like the ones at West Ham and QPR, which earned just a single point. The form of key players from last season, like Yaya Toure and Vincent Kompany, was rather disappointing and below the usual standard, and only the brilliance of Sergio Aguero was keeping the Sky Blues somewhat close to the top spot. They actually had a superb run towards the end of 2014, winning seven games in a row, and finally playing with the same assertiveness and efficiency that was displayed an year ago when the title was won. Added to that, they secured a monumental 2:0 win away at Roma to progress in the Champions League after a very poor start of the group campaign. A 3:2 win over Sunderland at the start of 2015 moved them level on points with Chelsea and it looked like a mouth-watering two-horse race for the title would develop in the second half of the season. But Pellegrini’s men proceeded to completely lose the plot over the next two months, playing a series of underwhelming games and dropping a whole lot of points. A run of three wins in nine, with costly losses at home to Liverpool and away at Arsenal, pretty much ended any hopes of defending the title. There were some very poor showings during that run, along with a meek surrender at the hands of Barcelona in the Champions League. The team did better in the final couple of months of the season and picked up six wins from their final six games, enough to secure the second place. But it has been a mostly disappointing and deflating season for a team that promises a lot but just failed to deliver consistently enough and ought to do better next season if Pellegrini is to keep his job.
