The contest between Manchester City, Liverpool, Spurs and Aston Villa for the final Champions League spot is set to be fiercer than the title race
It is time for the also-rans to accelerate. The race for fourth place in the Premier League can seldom have been so keen. The usual cartel was broken open in 2005, but that proved academic. Despite coming fifth, behind Everton, Liverpool still qualified for the Champions League as holders. This year Rafael Benítez’s team have no such comfort. Ambition and anxiety will be at their most intense. By comparison, the vying for the title itself seems humdrum in its familiarity.
The realistic contenders for the last Champions League spot are Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa. If investment was decisive the outcome would already be known. City’s expenditure has been great, but it is also accompanied by unease over the true standard of the recruits and the quality of the manager. In this little group of rivals, they alone have ditched the person who led them at the beginning of the campaign.
While the sacking of Mark Hughes was ruthless, it appeared to have an icy shrewdness. There had been only two victories in the previous 11 league games, but eyes were also fixed on the promising matches immediately before City. The new manager Roberto Mancini made the most of the opportunity and racked up victories over Stoke City, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers. A more forbidding step followed and the side keeled over at Goodison.
City must have anticipated that Mancini would show the expertise that brought success to Internazionale, but impact was restricted when only the subdued January transfer window was open to him. Patrick Vieira could be seen simply as a short-term signing and the involvement is abbreviated further now that he must serve a three-match ban. All in all, City’s situation is slightly less promising than it looks.
While the team are presently fourth with a game in hand, they have still to play Liverpool, tomorrow, as well as Chelsea, Tottenham, Manchester United, Arsenal and Aston Villa. City have already defeated Arsenal and Chelsea as part of their unbeaten home record, but there is much still to be examined and reports of player unrest over Mancini’s methods are unsettling.
Misgivings exist about all clubs striving for a new status. There is, for instance, a volatility to the Tottenham squad that can lose home and away to Wolves, a side 16th in the table. Stoke’s single league victory on the road also came at White Hart Lane. It is a hindrance that Aaron Lennon has not yet been fit to play in 2010 but Tottenham, who have scored only three goals in their last six league games, do not get quite enough out of the talent on the books, despite seeming well-served in most departments.
Aston Villa, by comparison, are no conundrum at all. The best defensive record in the Premier League is not merely commendable but critical to whatever hope Martin O’Neill still holds of entry to the Champions League. Goals have been infrequent and the manager would have been fully aware before the campaign that he did not possess a consistent scorer. Gabriel Agbonlahor reached double figures in the league with two goals against Fulham at the end of last month, but other contributions are meagre.
The side have an admirable midfield, yet they are creators who have little of the striker about them. The combined tally from that area is seven league goals. James Milner has supplied four and Ashley Young has come up with the other three. Stewart Downing and Stilian Petrov are yet to find the net at all in the competition. More broadly, Villa have drawn a blank in five of their past seven league games. There are real virtues to the line-up, but development will hinge on finding the means to strengthen the attack and to persuade the preferred candidate that Villa Park is the right destination.
All in all, any optimism expressed by Liverpool is likely to be genuine. That conclusion seems odd in view of the poverty of their play at times. A lumbering 1-0 win over Unirea Urziceni in the Europa League on Thursday was mocked, but it was still a useful result. The Romanian side are not as inept as some would suggest and had a better record than Liverpool in the group phase of the Champions League, even if both clubs were eliminated. Benítez has steadied Liverpool to a degree, and the narrow loss to Arsenal at the Emirates had been preceded by a sequence of seven unbeaten matches in the league.
Steven Gerrard also seemed closer to top form against Unirea, particularly when he took a ball on his chest before cracking a drive that missed narrowly. The midfielder has struggled to recover his dynamism and the usual knocks seemed to take longer to ease off, but his condition will be critical to Liverpool. Regardless of the outcome against City tomorrow, a re-emergence from the treatment room of Fernando Torres in the next few weeks could be decisive. When the Spaniard last took the field in the league he scored the only goal of the match at Villa Park on 29 December.
There is some monotony in the prospect of the usual quartet taking their places at the top of the table, but the challenge is for others to supplant them.
Premier LeagueLiverpoolTottenham HotspurManchester CityAston VillaChampions LeagueKevin McCarraguardian.co.uk
