Stephen Ireland: Man City Will Threaten The Best This Season

The playmaker is relishing the prospect of the Citizens becoming serious challengers over the coming campaign.

Jul 5, 2009 3:56:58 PM

More On :  Manchester City, Stephen Ireland
EPL: Stephen Ireland, Manchester City v Fulham (PA)
Manchester City midfielder Stephen Ireland feels that good times are just around the corner for a club who have traditionally been regarded as one of  English football's great underachievers.
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Ireland feels that with the new signings the Citizens are snapping up, they will be challenging at the right end of the Premier League table.

"The chairman has already said that the top six is the aim this season and it has got to be," he told the club's official website.

"We have to push on. If we get all the players the manager has targeted we will have a squad that is the equal of those sides who seem to win everything between them and are always in the Champions League.

 

"What the new signings have done already is give the manager many more options. At times last season other sides had worked out how to stop us playing so effectively but now they will not know what is coming in terms of formations. We could play almost any way with the players we have.

 

"There may be more rest and rotation this season but that is no bad thing if games are coming thick and fast like they do at Christmas and New Year. Top clubs need good players to fall back on."


Ireland is a graduate of the club's academy, and has been with the team when times were much tougher than now. He went on to confess that some of the names the club has been linked with has shocked even him.


"Some of the players who we have been seriously linked with and we have obviously talked to are unbelievable for those of us who have been here a long time," he enthused. 


"I never thought we would be in this position and that I would be talking about them and perhaps training alongside them.


"I have been here when we have struggled for money to buy players but thanks to the new owners we are in a different era now and it is as exciting for the players as I am sure it is for the supporters."

And the Irishman concluded by asserting that the critics who had sniped at the ability of manager Mark Hughes to bring success to the club were on the verge of being forced to eat their words, adding, "There were those people last season who suggested that the manager couldn’t handle big names but they were people who couldn’t possibly know what goes on in the training ground and in our dressing room.

 

"They couldn’t be more wrong and the manager will prove that again this season. All the players who have signed or we could sign will fit right in with what we do here. The manager just expects everyone to give their all. He has played at some of the biggest clubs in the world in his time and he knows what makes top players tick.

 

"The manager is as hungry as the rest of us to make sure this club starts winning things again it has been too long. We are all determined to show what we are about."


Zack Wilson, Goal.com


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