After winning two trophies in Manuel Pellegrini's first season in charge, Man City are suffering something of a hangover at the start of his second.

Overview

City, of course, bought that title. But then rarely in modern day football does anybody achieve anything without spending serious money. The Premier League is little more than an arm’s race, with Chelsea and Man City leading the way because they can spend more than anybody else. You don’t get teams building steadily and rising up to win league titles, like Leeds in the early 1990s, Forest in the 1980s or Derby in the 1970s any more. Blackburn bought the league title in 1995. Chelsea have bought every trophy they’ve ever won in the modern era. Manchester United likewise — every summer during the 1990s Manchester United would go out and buy the two outstanding players from the year before, and if the selling club resisted they just used the press to unsettle them. Manchester City used to pull 30,000 people into Maine Road for Second Division games against Blackpool, so let’s not go begrudging them this era of dominance they seem set to embark on because it’s all funded by a Sheikh.

The coverage of their title win last season was odd. The media had been so busy wanking itself into a frenzy, to the point of the skin peeling off, about the impending coronation of Liverpool, stopping only very occasionally to bring us live minute-by-minute updates of the latest utterly fascinating “war of words” involving Jose Mourinho, that they didn’t seem to notice Manchester City were actually quite good themselves. Well, City had spent £100m adding to an already quality team, the argument went, which isn’t nearly as romantic and interesting as Liverpool being bankrolled to the title by an American baseball club owner. And never mind Yaya Toure, a uniquely talented midfield player, the outstanding player in his position in the country, what about Suarez eh? Did you see him?

When Liverpool choked the rhetoric was about City winning the league “by default” — this a team that won 17 and drew one of 19 home matches and scored 102 league goals in total. They beat Norwich 7-0, Tottenham 6-0 and 5-0, Arsenal 6-3, Man Utd 4-1. They won the League Cup as well, which is and should still be a big deal to a club that has had such a barren recent history. Not a bad start for new manager Manuel Pellegrini — not that anybody seemed to notice or care very much.

During the summer they spent a slim £32m on Eliaquim Mangala from Porto, while cheekily bringing in Frank Lampard on loan as part of some convoluted arrangement with a yet-to-launch feeder club in New York. Again all the publicity surrounded a rival — Chelsea and Behold Louis Van Gaal this time rather than Liverpool — but City still looked like a strong title contender before the season kicked off.

However, they allowed Alvaro Negredo to leave without adequate replacement making them even more reliant than before on Sergio Aguero. They've found that now Yaya Toure, still reeling at not being bought a cake for his birthday, is struggling for form their midfield is nowhere near formidable as it was last season. And Mangala hasn't settled well at the back. Cracks appeared in a 1-0 home defeat by Stoke and have opened up recently with defeats to West Ham and Newcastle domestically, and two shambolic performances against CSKA Moscow in the Champions League — which City still seem to be struggling to get to grips with as a team and a club.

It's all led to the rather odd situation this Saturday where the reigning champions, with a team that has cost the best part of a billion pounds in transfer fees and wages, is coming to little old Loftus Road to play second bottom QPR and pundits are tipping an upset. An injury to Vincent Kompany on Wednesday evening has added kindling to a minor blaze.

It's the sort of backs-to-the-wall moment that true champion sides thrive upon and make their name. City looked mentally fragile against the Russians, and in the closing stages of a 1-0 win against ten-man Man Utd last week. QPR would do well to pray on those doubts, than sit back and hope that this recent wobble becomes a full blown implosion of its own accord.

Scout Report

They played more of a 4-2-3-1 set up at Upton Park initially with Aguero playing off Dzeko up front, Silva left and Jesus Navas right, Yaya Toure and Fernando as the holding central midfielders. There was a lot of ball for Silva in the left channel in this one, but hardly any at all for Navas on the other side, denying him the chance to use his pace and hurt West Ham.

The system worked for Silva but few of the other City players. Dzeko was hopelessly isolated up front. Toure ineffective so deep in midfield. With West Ham well on top and in front on the scoreboard City changed in the second half, brining Jovetic on from the bench to play up front alongside Aguero in a conventional two-man set up. Toure pushed further forward, Navas saw more of the ball, and the momentum in the game shifted — West Ham were totally dominant for at least an hour but ultimately hanging on for the win at the end.

This is a recurring theme when I see City at the moment — great players, but not being played where they can do the most damage. Yaya Toure is in very poor form by his incredibly high standards, but he's not helped by playing deep in midfield, or in a box-to-box role in a 4-4-2 as he was against Moscow on Wednesday night. In the former he's not able to effect the attack as we all know he can, and in the latter he's easily outnumbered and pressed out of the game.

One noticeable tactic from West Ham was that whenever they did lose the ball they immediately committed a foul so they could get back in shape. There's been a lot of talk about this as a technique by various experts this season but rarely have I seen it executed so blatantly as it was at Upton Park — the Hammers conceded ten free kicks in the first 25 minutes. It meant that whenever City did have the ball to attack, they were looking up at a West Ham team all back and in shape. Other than that the Hammers did little more than press high, play with energy, engage the City defence, play physically and put decent crosses into the box. That was enough, and QPR can certainly do that.

With Silva and Kompany out QPR will fancy their chances more than they should, but City will still put a highly talented team out onto the field on Saturday night. Pablo Zabaletta, for example, is rated as one of the world's outstanding full backs, as much for his attack as his defence, and if he and Navas get going down the right then QPR could have problems. The temptation is to go very defensive against them on that side, and perhaps pick Armand Traore as a second left back in front of Yun Suk-Young, but in the Manchester derby last week, before Chris Smalling's brain fart, it was interesting that United saw Zabaletta's attacking ambitions as a potential weakness in City's armour. Every time possession changed from City to United with Zabaletta up the field they quickly played a direct ball into their left channel, into the space Zabaletta had vacated. Would QPR be tempted to perhaps shift Eduardo Vargas to the left flank and do the same, potentially leaving Suk Young exposed, but equally getting a chance for the Chilean to run at the centre of City's defence which is missing Vincent Kompany this weekend?

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TacticalR added 21:17 - Nov 7 Thanks for your oppo report. Yaya has never been the same man since his birthday cake trauma. How about a birthday cake presentation before the match to mess with his head? Silva has been the architect of our downfall on more than one occasion, so it's good that he's out. It will be great for us if the Man City wobble continues, but that never seems to happen when a team on a bad run comes to QPR. I don't think we can monster City West Ham-style, so we'll have to play some football.

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