Five Thoughts: Manchester City 1-0 Everton

Just a great write-up of the match here so go read lafaitele. Other things we learned from yesterday, other than Joe Hart earned his contract with that finger tip save:

Part the First: Just When Things We're Looking So Good

And isn't that the City way. Nearly three weeks of fantastic football with a budding superstar, a whisper away from being top of the league before getting a pie in the face, reminding us that being a City fan is never, ever easy.

Here's what we know about Aguero's injury, as of this hour:

• It's a ligament injury and
• He'll miss the Roma game on Wednesday and
• City will play well without him.

Yeah, about that last one. In past seasons, an injury to any one of Aguero, Vincent Kompany, David Silva or Yaya Toure would be painfully disruptive to the side. But this month has seen not only a resurgent City side but a team that sneers at the very thought of an injury causing problems. David Silva has been gone for days on end and the team keeps winning. Yaya can get suspended and the team will beat Bayern Munich (notice how hard he's playing since that match). Vincent Kompany will get his annual injury and the defense doubles down. I don't know if we'll win the match at Roma but I do see a wonderful trend that I haven't really seen in previous years. To wit:

Part the Second: Everyone Playing Hard, Everyone Playing Well

Some of you may know I first became a City fan in 2011-Aguero's first game. It's a long story involving my rejecting other sports that take 3-4 hours to finish and devoting myself to ‘soccer' as it is known on this side of the pond. Since that time, it's been a relatively rare occurrence when every Citizen has played hard and well for an entire match. That's not a criticism-effort is always there but sometimes health, fatigue and just a bad day at the office can get in the way of performance. Which brings me to my point-during this streak, virtually everyone is playing particularly well. Some have set themselves apart from others; Aguero has been all-world and if James Milner doesn't get a new contract soon, the powers that be at the Etihad are going to see picket signs.

It wasn't that long back that City was a painfully inconsistent side and there were open questions in the press and in this column that Manuel Pellegrini could be in trouble. Since that time, all Pellegrini has done is get his banged up players to play the best football of any Premier League side this season for nearly a month now.

Part the Third: The Milner PK

I'm reading two objections to James Milner drawing a penalty. Most of the objections are from fans of Chelsea and an increasingly shrill section of ManU fans: it wasn't much of a foul and Milner didn't even think he got fouled-he kept playing. If you hear this, dear readers, respond thusly:

• A foul anywhere else on the pitch should be a foul in the box and
• Milner never, ever stops playing until he hears a whistle and
• It is a sign of progression that a player doesn't have to waive his arms pleading to all who will watch and listen in order to get a call. In other words, a player doesn't have to act like Wayne Rooney (sorry, had to).

Part the Fourth: Money News

• According to Pellegrini, City will not be spending much-if at all-in the January window. Granted, he did say this before the Aguero injury.
• For nearly six years, City fans have been hearing about how we'll go bankrupt with all the spending we've been doing. Yeah, not so much.

Part the Fifth: Poll!

You know what to do.