Is the Blue Moon really rising?

Never before have I feared Manchester City as a genuine title contender. Luckily I still don't.

Yes, they sit a very promising 2nd in the table and after a brief hiccup in the F.A. Cup, they find themselves in the 4th round after a comfortable 4-2 replay win against Leicester.

There appear to be, however, deep-rooted issues and in-fighting that appear to be affecting team harmony and subsequently I can see them falling off in the second half of the season.

As a manager, I fail to rate Roberto Mancini. The guy has been at the helm at Eastlands for over a year now and can only just about stumble awkwardly through a television interview. How on earth he gets his message across to a team that, in their last Premier League outing, consisted of seven different nationalities is beyond me.

Obviously I can only imagine the atmosphere at a Manchester City training session but I'm not sure it's somewhere I would feel entirely comfortable. The apparent lack of camaraderie is surely to have a detrimental effect on team performance.

Added to this, they have a complete lack of experience of fighting at the top in the race for the title and new found (if somewhat deluded) expectations from their fans.

But as my friend and City fan explains: "Supporting Man City is now a joyless experience, where winning results in an awkward embarrassment, and losing sparks mass celebrations and mocking at our expense along the lines of 'you can't buy success'."

He's right. Call it jealousy, call it what you like, people are clearly afraid of the rise of City under its Arab ownership. Yet they still miss something.

That something, I believe, is the Mourinho factor. With him, I am in no doubt that City could win the title. At Chelsea he brought the team together, he cut the bullshit and people respected him. It was the same at Inter.

As we all know, he is also a master of diverting attention away from his players and taking it on himself, something which I think the players at City would benefit greatly from when faced with unprecedented levels of pressure and expectation.

He, like Ferguson at Manchester United, also has an ability to push his team to get results even when they are playing poorly, something which has been well documented at Old Trafford this season.

When playing their best, they are capable of turning in great results against good teams. Too many times, however, they fail to push on from that and fall complacent against smaller teams which will prove costly come the end of the season.

And it is for these reasons that I can sleep safe at night in the knowledge that while City may well be in the ascendancy, they have a long way to go yet.