Best yet to come

MANCHESTER City are a tough team to figure out as we enter the second month of the season.

The champions’ manager, Roberto Mancini, is a stickler for defence — yet if you include the Community Shield, the Blues have gone four cmpetitive matches without a clean sheet.

They started the previous campaign by bulldozing everyone in their path but this time, rather than flaunting their champion status, they look less fluent.

Sergio Aguero is absent with a knee injury but the presence of Carlos Tevez, Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli, with a supporting cast of David Silva and Samir Nasri, should be more than enough to compensate.

And a further contradiction saw the richest club in the world draft in free agent Richard Wright as their third-choice goalkeeper on transfer deadline day, no doubt to help balance the books ahead of the Financial Fair Play crackdown.

The positives are easy to sum-up: City are unbeaten, Tevez is fit and firing again, and four other deadline day arrivals - Matija Nastasic, Maicon, Javi Garcia and Scott Sinclair will provide Mancini with more options in a busy season in which his side hope to compete for four trophies.

But whatever the formation, City need to plug their leak.






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