The pair have been both opponents at club level and colleagues at junior international level for several years, but since Milner’s move to City they have lined up alongside each other regularly for both club and country.
Johnson’s two goals in two games for England brought his talents to a wider audience, and he followed this with a man-of-the-match display against Blackburn for the Blues last Saturday. Form can dip when players return from international duty, so James is delighted with what he saw and he expects more to follow.
“It can difficult being away with an international team to then come back to your club,” says James. “Younger players can be more inconsistent, but Adam has played a lot of games in his career. He’s getting more experience, and the international games can only help.
He’s playing very, very well at the moment and when you are playing as well as Adam is you just want the next game to come along as quickly as possible. He’s flying right now, hopefully he can keep it that way for us.
“He is quick, creative and has a bag of tricks. He’s very dangerous and is a great type of player to have around, give him the ball and something is likely to happen because he has the ability to unlock defences.”
While Adam won more plaudits against Blackburn, the final result was a disappointing one but James says that City must learn the knack of getting maximum points even when not at their best.
“It will take time for us to get to our best, but it is about picking up results while we’re not quite there,” he insists. “You can’t afford to lose too much ground, so it’s down to us to grind out those results when we are not playing so well.
“On the other hand, we are creating chances. Teams are happy to sit behind the ball against us, so if we were not creating that would be a worry but we are. We just need a bit of luck in front of goal, once that happens I’m sure the goals will start flying in.”
