Manuel Pellegrini needs to make sure that City hold on to the last Champions League spot

Manchester City began their season with their sights firmly set on holding on to the crown that they so marvelously won last year. For the most part of the season, they were doing a good enough job by staying on course for a title challenge, if not an out and out victory. Yes, the Citizens never really had the title in their grasp as Chelsea were always a step ahead, relentlessly holding onto the top spot, but City were never too far off as well. But then along came the month of February and that is when things started going wrong for us.

Franki Lamprad vies for the ball with West Ham’s Matt Noble as City beat the visitors by two clear goals

The wheels started to fall off our title charge and before you know it, we were out of the title race and had to be content with second place. If my fellow Citizens thought that that was bad, then they had no idea what was coming. Apparently, second place was just the beginning as a series of poor results saw us slip to third and then finally fourth. As things stand right now, City are fourth in the league table with a seven point cushion between themselves and Liverpool in fifth place. Where the slide ultimately stops is yet to be seen because there is a big chance that we may actually get leapfrogged by Brendan Rodgers’s boys who are in a pretty decent run of form. We however, are on an absolutely terrible streak that has seen us grab just nine points from our last six games. To put that into perspective, Liverpool have picked up 12 points in their last six, while Arsenal have picked up exactly two times the number of points we picked up. City currently occupy 11th place in the Premier League Form Table, something that they surely would not have been targeting when the League got underway back in August last year. Things may indeed be getting a bit better as Pellegrini’s men beat West Ham by two goals to nil to get three points on the board for the first time in two games.

Sergio Aguero celebrates after scoring for City in their win against West Ham

This definitely makes the table better to read for us Citizens as we now have a seven point gap over Liverpool and with just five games left to go, we better hope that we do not slide down any further. If by any chance though, Manchester City do fail to finish in the top four, then Manuel Pellegrini’s job will be cast under a great cloud of doubt.  There is no chance that our owners will accept anything other than a Champions League finish at the least and with the likes of Rafa Benitez and Jurgen Klopp available to seek new employment at the end of this term, the chances of Pellegrini being kept on despite the absence of Champions League football will be very, very surprising. At this point of time though, what we need to concentrate on is finishing fourth and not dropping down any lower because that is something that we have not come to expect from today’s Manchester City.