Manchester City: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!

If you believe the larger part of the UK sports media, then Roberto Mancini is in trouble.

His job is on the line after three games that have ended in a draw, a win, and a loss and have gained City a total of four points.

There are many Manchester City fans, typically new to supporting City or young enough to not know better, who are talking in cataclysmic terms after the Sunderland defeat.

But I have a word of warning for all the doubters and naysayers:

"You ain't seen nothin' yet."

City's first game was against a top-four rival away. So a point there is a good result.

The first home game brought three points and a hugely impressive performance against one of the Sky 4, again a good result.

And Sunday brought a defeat to a 94th minute penalty away from home to a good team, and after some woefully wasteful finishing. So not great, but certainly not the end of the world.

A break for international matches allows more time for some of the newer players to improve fitness and for some of the injured players to gain fitness.

After Sunday, of course, City will definitely be waiting for Balotelli's fitness to be of the match variety and such a charismatic player will bring a massive boost.

But perhaps even more importantly for those who worry about City is the return of two fullbacks, Boateng and Kolarov. 

Once these two players return, the makeshift fullback Lescott can be rested, and Richards need not be relied on.

There are, of course, improvements in City's team play that will come with the players gelling and becoming more of a unit, but I saw some impressive signs of that on Sunday and cannot recall a better performance from any City team in my lifetime than that against Liverpool.

There are likely to be a few weeks of settling for City fans to suffer, but it really is going to be a wonderful season.