Slip sliding away

MAN CITY v ASTON VILLA

(Tomorrow, 2.45am, SingTel mio TV Ch 102 & StarHub TV Ch 227)

Samir Nasri summed up the feelings of an entire football club yesterday morning (Singapore time) when he took to Twitter in praise of Crystal Palace after they fought back from three goals down to hold Liverpool to a 3-3 draw.

"What a game, what a league, I love Crystal Palace so much! Now it's our turn to do a job," Nasri tweeted.

It is indeed all down to Manchester City now and they could not have been given more of a morale boost than what they saw yesterday morning.

With 12 minutes to go, there was a genuine fear that Liverpool might power home enough goals to bring the title back into range.

By full-time, it was a very, very different story.

City now have two home games, both against weak opponents with nothing to play for except pride, and there has been little evidence of that from Aston Villa this season.

Paul Lambert's team have survived for another season in the time-honoured fashion of ensuring that there are at least three worse teams beneath them.

Villa's 3-1 victory over Hull City last weekend secured their safety, but it came after a miserable run of just one point from six games.

The Villans are paying the price for a managed decline, a desperate bid from owner Randy Lerner to balance the books.

Having initially invested heavily in a bid to lift Villa into the Champions League, the American owner found himself with a large squad full of high-earning nearly men on long contracts.

Hordes of senior players have since been discarded, replaced by youngsters from the lower leagues and hopeful punts from abroad. There have been mixed results.

SUCCESSFUL PUNT

Without Christian Benteke, the most successful of the punts - even with his mediocre return of 10 goals this season - Villa are a very ordinary side.

There are players like Fabian Delph and Ashley Westwood who can be relied upon to graft in the central areas, the former with rather more style than the latter, but there are others who rarely look up to the challenge.

Brendan Rodgers repeated his assertion that Villa are a good side on the counter-attack, and with the pace of Andreas Weimann and Gabriel Agbonlahor, but there isn't enough quality to seriously concern a club of City's calibre.

That is not to say that this is a foregone conclusion.

After all, you only have to go back two years to find City facing a wretched QPR side at home on the last day of the season and entering injury time in a losing position.

They are entirely capable of shooting themselves in the foot, it's just very difficult to visualise it happening here.

The performance against Everton last Saturday rather typified their campaign.

Not perfect by any extent, but a measured display of power with evidence of stern character.

Some teams would have responded poorly to Ross Barkley's phenomenal opening goal.

City simply took a breath and responded like champions.

Even with Sergio Aguero's continuing injury problems and Alvaro Negredo's worrying drought, there are enough goals in Edin Dzeko, not to mention Yaya Toure, to see City through any moments of discomfort.

Title-winning teams are not always the most exciting, or even the most talented teams. But they are almost always the toughest.

Liverpool, like so many sides before them, have just been reminded about the mental strain of the run-in, the intense scrutiny and the realisation that every single game must be won.

City have done this before and they don't, for now, show any signs of buckling under the pressure.

Nasri is right.

If another Premier League title is to be claimed, then all Man City need to do now is their job.

This article was published on May 7 in The New Paper.

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