Manchester City plan to keep pressure on after West Brom stroll

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/mar/22/manuel-pellegrini-man-city-pressure-west-brom

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After two consecutive defeats Manchester City are back to winning ways, but is it too late? Manuel Pellegrini, the champions’ manager, believes not as Chelsea, in his opinion, are not a “winning machine”. City must keep the pressure on.

This victory over West Bromwich Albion, who went down to 10 men inside two minutes with the wrong player sent off, was only a fourth in 13 games, yet the way City strolled around all afternoon monopolising ball and territory made it seem normal service had been resumed.

Chelsea are still the favourites and with only eight games remaining, Pellegrini was asked if the challenge now was to close the season with pride. “It’s not just to finish in a proud way. Football has a lot of difficult moments,” Pellegrini said. “You never know what will happen when you have 24 more points to play for. Last season we were nine points behind Chelsea with three games in hand but we were also eight behind Arsenal. Especially in this league that is so easy for every team to beat another team.”

Chelsea have a match in hand, too, but Pellegrini said: “I don’t think they are a winning machine all the time. I think you ask me maybe two or three weeks before I am sure [I said] from now until the end of the season every team will drop points so it’s important to return to our normal performance and win our games.

“After that we will see what happens with Chelsea. Maybe we can win all the games and maybe we can retain the title. The important thing is they must feel pressure. If you don’t win it’s easy for them. We depend just on these eight games at least to finish in the same position we are now.”

Frank Lampard, who made his first start since early January, recalled how Carlo Ancelotti was under pressure during the 2009-10 season when in charge at Chelsea. Then, fortunes changed. “Football is funny,” he said. “The year we won the double we got beaten by Inter in the Champions League and we were struggling in the Premier League and everyone was talking about him getting the sack and we went and won the double. So it shows you what can happen in football.

“I don’t think you can ever make too many calls or judgments at this stage of the season. Judgments will be made at the end of the season. At the moment I don’t think it is time to look at players, and ask whether this player or that player, or the manager, will be here next year. It is too early for that talk. That will take place in the summer.”

Goals from Wilfried Bony – his first for City – Fernando and David Silva confirmed three points that felt inevitable from the moment Neil Swarbrick sent off Gareth McAuley after 89 seconds.

It was Craig Dawson who should have walked for the foul on Bony just outside the area. Swarbrick, who later apologised, has joined Roger East last month and Andre Marriner last year in missing the real culprit when sending players off.

Tony Pulis, understandably, was not happy. “I mentioned it last week in my programme notes and I’ll say it again today – there are major decisions this year affecting games. And instead of moaning about it, how can we, as a profession, improve the situation?” said the West Bromwich manager, who wants a video review system put in place to help officials.

“We’ve got a great game and a great product that sells all over the world, and we’ve got to keep moving on. You can’t not move on. And that [managers having challenges] is one of the ways to improve it. As I say, even the clubs will make money. Because you can stick it up on the screen and for 30 seconds the main sponsors can get good advertising.”

West Bromwich remain on 33 points – Pulis said two wins and a draw will guarantee safety – and both teams now have a fortnight off because of the international break. City’s next game is a trip to Crystal Palace, for which Pellegrini hopes Yaya Touré, who has an achilles problem and will be assessed by the Ivory Coast medical department when he joins up with his country, can return. “We will see what happens with the national team during these two games. I hope he will have 10 days to recover,” he said.

Man of the match Wilfried Bony (Manchester City)