Early kick-off – straight to it…
v Liverpool
Predicted line-up, subs and outcome:
(Number correct
from the starting line-up in the last game: 10/11).
A very fluid 4-1-4-1 / 4-5-1 / 4-2-3-1:
____________________Haaland____________________
____________________________Foden_____________
Grealish___________________________________Doku
______________Silva_____________________________
_____________________Rodri_____________________
Gvardiol__________________________________Walker
_____________Dias_____________Akanji____________
____________________Ederson____________________
Subs: Carson, Ortega, Gomez, Lewis, Ake, Phillips, Bobb & Alvarez.
Ederson, despite
him missing international duty due to an ankle / foot issue, to start. I could
easily be wrong of course.
A back-4 of Josko,
Ruben, Manuel & Kyle.
Rodders ahead of
those, while I see an attacking midfield / wing quartet of Jack, Bernardo, perhaps
in a ‘dual role’, Phil & Jeremy.
Erling, despite an
ankle / foot issue himself recently, to head the lot.
Two keepers on the
bench in the form of Scott & Stefan; a-returning Sergio (I could be wrong -
he could still be out following an ankle ligament injury a few weeks back),
Rico & Nathan are the defenders on the side. Kalvin is the only central
midfielder in the 8 from a possible 9 on the bench, while Oscar & Julian
provide attacking replacement options.
Notable absences:
With
another training session set to take place following Pep’s
pre-match press conference on Friday afternoon, there were, at the time, some
doubts about player fitness / injury / availability. Therefore, I can only use
my judgement about who might be unavailable for this afternoon’s game.
- John Stones – I’m guessing that this match
might be too soon for the England defender following his latest thigh /
muscular issue.
- Kevin De
Bruyne – Continues to
train alone whilst being assessed by physios after each & every session and,
up to a couple of weeks ago, still wasn’t running…or running much at least. Fairly
recent news indicated that he was “feeling good” and his manager got the impression
that it wouldn’t be too long before Kevin was back training with his teammates.
It sounded like a mid-to-late December return, rather than an initially-predicted
January comeback, was a possibility; although that now appears a little
optimistic to me. We shall see – we don’t want the process to be rushed only
for him to break down again.
- Mateo
Kovacic – Just like
John, the Croatian international suffered a thigh problem and a report from a
few days ago suggested that he might be out for 2 to 3 weeks. That’s what I’m
running with.
- Matheus
Nunes – Another muscular
injury casualty, apparently, and I’m assuming that the Portuguese international
will be ruled out also.
Do I agree with Pep’s (predicted) line-up?
Yeah it’s good.
I think Doku is the key in this
fixture – while we’d have Jack on the left helping to hold the ball up and
maintain possession against a side desperate to grab the ball and run like hell
towards our goal; there’d be Jeremy on the other side hoping to use his pace to-quickly
get behind an advanced Liverpool side in a City counter-attack move, which
might catch our visitors out 🤞.
Result? A side in
marginally better league form than we are; a side with the closest ‘plus goal
difference’ to us, a side who have only been beaten once in the league and a
side with a better league-defensive record than we have, which is often one of
their weaknesses…but not this season so far.
Yes, if any City fan was thinking of walking into this
game with a ‘chest out’, we-should-beat-these-at-home attitude, then they might
want to think again.
Of course we are more than capable of doing so and we
have taken all-3 points from Klopp’s reds in the past. However, I think this is going to be
one hell of a difficult game following an international break and against an
in-form & dangerous-attacking side…and that’s despite it being their
manager’s ‘pet hate’ kick-off time (12:30pm GMT) following said-international pause.
I’ve genuinely not been paying too much attention to
Liverpool in recent times; either this season or much of last. In fact, it sort
of surprised me a little when they popped up just behind us in second place
recently. I say surprised - I did have them being ‘there of there abouts’ at
the end of the season; predicting them to finish the season 4th.
Therefore, I can only assume that they still play the same,
gung-ho, all-attacking style for the opening ½-hour or so; producing wave after
wave of fast-paced attacks in the hope that the opposition eventually
capitulates. If so, that could be a shock to our system, especially ‘right from
the off’ after a fortnight of not playing together. If we survive that potential,
opening barrage relatively unscathed, that’s when I can see us hitting back
with our own style of attacking play.
One encouraging statistic for us Blues
is that, while our visitors have an outstanding home-league record this season
of P6 W6 D0 L0 – F17 A2, their away record reads very differently as, P6 W2 D3 L1 – F10 A8.
As I’ve already suggested, I think this one will be a
tight affair scoreline-wise; I think both sides will score but I’ve just got a
feeling, despite strong leanings towards a draw, that we’ll edge it. It’s a
narrow City win for me.
Last season’s, corresponding pre-match
prediction and result:
Prediction: Draw
Result: Won
(Pre-match blog posting from that game)
Expected weather conditions
during the game: Beautiful, bight, crisp day for a game of footy. It’ll be cold in the stands for sure, particularly when in the shade I would think, at just 3 or 4C but there’s no breeze and nothing but blue skies and sunshine above. Perfect weather for the players to exert themselves for 90+ minutes.
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| Solidarity |
