Manchester City: On a Hiding To Something

And so it began. Finally. The club seemingly single-handed in being responsible for all that is greed-fuelled about football, Manchester City, kicked off their Premier League campaign with a 2-0 victory over Blackburn Rovers.

To some, this would seem an innocuous victory—of course City should win at Blackburn, they've spent 4 billion, trillion pounds. But what was probably the most meaningful aspect of the result for City fans was that this match was set up for a big fall, and one the City of old would have lost at a canter.

But with the ease with which they won, and ground out a result without particularly playing well, was the sort of performance that, whisper it, was the stuff of champions.

Of course, one decent away performance does not warrant the jet-washing of the open-top bus just yet, but the signs were extremely promising. New signings, Adebayor, Barry, and Toure, fitted into the sky blue jigsaw perfectly, and Tevez, hero-worshipped by the blue hordes, packed in behind the goal, merely for snubbing "that lot" in favour of a place on THE Manchester team's subs bench, came on and ran around chasing everything, adding power and pace to our attack.

Perhaps even more pleasing for most City fans was that standing toe-to-toe with the new "galacticos" were our academy players, Richards, Wright-Phillips, and Superman Stevie Ireland.

Mark Hughes has the job of getting the blend right this season if we are to have any success. Getting these players to perform week in, week out. On Saturday he had a squad of 18 players who each would have run through walls for that blue shirt, and that bodes well for the rest of the season if that can be maintained. 

There are certain sections of the press, and fans and managers of "the top four" who were hoping and praying for Hughes to slip up, and he duly obliged after the final whistle, as his suit trousers troubled the Ewood Park turf as he slipped on his backside, but Hughes shrugged it off, and had the last laugh, and hopefully that is a sign of things to come.