Manchester City: 2011-2012 Has Seen Much Improvement, City Creating True Winning Mentality

No buys in the January transfer window with the start of new rules being implemented by Uefa, was probably more about Mancini being happy with his playing staff and not wanting to panic buy than any rules but.

There was only one arrival at City with the short term loan signing of David Pizzaro from A.S.Roma.

The sales of Nedum Onuoha, Shaun Wright Phillips, Kieran Trippier and Chris Chantler, Nedum and Shaun generated just under £10 million between them.

Although releasing Craig Bellamy for free in 2011, we generated just under £20 million for Jerome Boateng, Jo Alves and Shay Given.

Joe Hart has grown into a top goalkeeper, it is astonishing he is out-performing keepers like Van Der Sar, Reina and Cech. You can argue all you want about a keeper only being as good as the defenders in front of him but, Joe's success rate at pulling off pivotal saves is far better than even the best keepers around this season.

While we suffered from the loss of Titan Yaya to the African Nations Cup, one player raised their level when their level was already magical. David (Merlin) Silva never ceases to amaze, without any shadow of a doubt the best player in the English top flight this season.

Aside his silly mistakes one player really stepped in after the loss of Vincent Kompany to a red card that should never have been, I have been an extreme critic of Joleon Lescott since his arrival but this season he has forced me to review that opinion.

Although I still feel he is not the permanent answer to partner Kompany, he is definitely a valuable asset to the squad and always good cover for both centre-back and left wing-back.

Youth players making big progress.

Forward (Swede) John Guidetti currently at Feyenoord and EDS forwards (English) Jordi Hiwula and (English) Harry Bunn are all stepping up to the plate and improving, very promising youth and the later two gives me confidence that England will one day succeed where players like Rooney and Scholes failed.

Then include (English) Alex Henshall and (English) Devante cole, (Slovakian) Albert Rusnak, (Dutch) Karim Rekik, (Spanish) Denis Suarez, (French) Jeremy Helan & (Israeli) Gai Assulin all making significant progress, so even if we only see one third of them break through to the first team we will be a very lucky bunch of fans indeed.

We certainly won't need to go on a big spending spree anytime soon, which is a positive considering the financial fair play rules imminent. I'd say we are only two senior players short of the finished article, being a centre-back to partner Kompany and competition for Yaya in centre-mid.

Since the arrival of Sheikh Mansour we only saw gradual glimpses of that fight back mentality growing but at times still let ourselves get rolled over to get sucker punched until now.

With the combined strengths of Vincent Kompany, Micah Richards, Pablo Zabaleta, Gareth Barry, James Milner, Nigel Dejong and Yaya Toure, we have toughened up. It puts into perspective why we have received so many bookings lately, not that we deserved most of them but still.

We're top of the Premier League and we fight like champions, we have arrived and we are truly back in the big time. After the fall from grace in the Champions League our players showed they have learnt their lesson and performed outstandingly against Portugese outfit and Europa League holders FC Porto.

Big well done to all the staff working hard behind the scenes and a big well done to all the playing staff at Manchester City.

Keep the faith! I've not even scratched the surface.