Rather than enjoying an end-of-season cruise towards mid-table, Newcastle have stalled just as those in deeper trouble have begun to motor.
Sunderland , who travel to St James’ Park for a potentially seismic Tyne-Wear derby on April 14, might just have generated some momentum of their own by dismissing manager Martin O’Neill, so the warning signs are ringing loud and clear for Newcastle, even if the noise is being dismissed as interference by Pardew.
“Did I expect to win here today? I hoped we would, but I didn’t expect to,” Pardew said, “We always knew it would be the remaining games in the Premier League which would be the important ones. That isn’t going to change.
“I think it (relegation) has been at arm’s length for a long while. I don’t think we’ve been that far away from safety.
“It’s all ifs and buts. We are where we are and it is what it is. We’re not hiding from it. You need 40 points this year for sure.”
Within the Newcastle dressing room, the dark cloud of relegation has been spotted on the horizon, however with captain Yohan Cabaye admitting that actions must now speak louder than words.
“We are in a bad position and the truth is out on the pitch,” Cabaye said. “We can’t say this or that and then not deliver on the pitch.”
Newcastle clearly did not deliver against City, whose performance suggested they will comfortably secure runners-up spot behind Manchester United rather than allow Tottenham to succeed with a late-season surge for second.
It was a display of champions, albeit rather too late to actually matter in the title race, and City’s victory was orchestrated by Samir Nasri, the infuriating French midfielder who too often fails to display his obvious talents.
Had Nasri produced similar vision and work-rate throughout the season, maybe City would be the ‘six or seven points’ adrift of United, rather than the fifteen, which Roberto Mancini believes they should be.
Nasri created David Silva’s goal on the stroke of half-time – four minutes after Carlos Tévez had scored a close-range opener – with a neat pass for the Spaniard to score and he also influenced the game after the interval, when City extended their lead through Vincent Kompany and Yaya Toure.
Mancini has been a strong critic of Nasri, bemoaning his repeated failure to perform to the best of his ability, and the Italian joked about his exasperation with the former Arsenal player following his contribution in this game.
“I would like to give him a punch,” Mancini said. “A player like him should play like today, always. Every game.
“I can’t understand how a player with his quality doesn’t play like today every game.”
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