Forever Blue with Ian Cheeseman

What a strange season this is proving so far for Manchester City.

At the weekend I hosted a debate on my Forever Blue podcast which featured two very different opinions about City’s form. Former Blues’ midfielder Gary Owen and aspiring journalist Adam had a rather heated debate about where City were, after the 1-1 draw at West Ham. Adam’s view was that the team was underperforming compared to the last couple of highly successful seasons under the guidance of Pep Guardiola. 

Gary got rather animated in his reply which was to suggest that five games into a new campaign, which has seen City win two, draw two and lose one in the Premier League despite star players Kevin De Bruyne and Sergio Aguero missing games through injury, was not the time to be so negative. I could see the points that both of them were making but their opposing views felt a little tense at times. They represented the two sides of an argument I’ve seen played out on the increasingly toxic social media platforms a lot in recent weeks.

We seem to live in an increasingly angry society at the moment with tribal views on all aspects of life and what we are going through causing division like I’ve never really seen before. I’m a journalist but also a life-long Manchester City fan. I miss attending games more than you can imagine because it’s what I’ve done since I was a teenager. 

This week I would normally have been in Marseille for a couple of days exploring the culture of the City where my team was playing in the Champions League. I’d have looked forward to visiting the impressive Stade Velodrome and I’m sure the hairs on the back of my neck would have been standing on end (not that I have much these days) when the teams came out.

I watched the game on TV. Maybe that should read, I watched the sanitised game on TV. No crowd to create that electric atmosphere, to fire up the home team and to attempt to unsettle City. The game might as well have been played at a neutral venue. At the weekend the TV commentator had suggested that West Ham’s rear-guard would have been less likely to keep City’s non-stop attacks out, in the closing minutes, if their home crowd’s anxiety had been evident. West Ham got their point but in France City swept Marseille aside, with ease.

I don’t know what to make of football or City at the moment. They were overwhelming in Marseille but underwhelming at West Ham. Are City not as strong as they were in their Centurion season, as my podcast guest Adam would have us believe or did the win in the Champions League show that Gary Owen’s more “glass half full” view was nearer the truth. I admit I don’t know.

During this strange period of our lives where fans can sit indoors and watch football in a cinema but it’s deemed too dangerous to watch it, at a safe social distance, in an outdoor stadium, I’ve slightly disengaged from the sport. I find it hard to get excited or depressed by results that once mattered to me and I’m finding it harder to assess performances because of the restrictions of TV viewing. I don’t think I’m the only one feeling this way. Let’s hope the medical solution to this horrible pandemic is sooner rather than later. 

I actually envied Adam and Gary as they argued about City’s early season form, because for the first time in my life the passion that focused their angry debate felt a little alien to me. My more measured view is that this season, more than any other, defies logic.