In good Kompany

Our sorely missed Captain travels with the squad to the Czech Republic and it’ll be interesting to see if he’ll play. I’d rather not risk him if he's only 80% or there abouts; for me it’s far more important to win the game on Sunday.

Pellegrini’s focus

Even at this early stage it appears as though Manuel is placing a lot of emphasis on the Champions League, whether that’s his own desire or his remit from Executives above. Perhaps it’s both. A much weakened team against Stoke, his own words (stating that we need to win the game against Viktoria Plzen) and the possible early inclusion of Vinny tonight has lead me to believe that this is the case.

Speaking of our Manager’s words I had to play, 3 times, a section of his pre-Plzen match interview to truly believe what I was hearing, as he said…

“Without Vincent, except the game against Cardiff; the defence played very well” [adding that we have 3 clean sheets in the 3 games, which is correct and fair enough].

Clean sheets aside..."played very well"?! Did he watch the Hull & Stoke City games? Like me did he not watch an uncharacteristically below par performance Nastasic had against Hull on his (fare enough) return from injury? Did he not see Lescott get turned inside out on more than one occasion against The Tigers? Did he not see Garcia struggle, once again, to do an impression of a central defender and did he not see the gaping hole at left-back where Kolarov should have been?

Considering he has no issues with English; I’ll be keeping an eye on Pellegrini’s quotes from now on…

Regardless of whether Kompany plays or not, I get the feeling our training cone left-back will be chosen ahead of Clichy again tonight. Huhhhh...great. Let’s just hope Clichy is being 'prepped' for the game against Manyoo on Sunday.

David Silva is still missing, having not travelled to the Czech Republic.

Beer, beer we want got more beer…

According to the Manchester Evening News Plzen’s ground has a bridge leading to the local (and very large) brewery, which houses a bar that can hold 4,000 people! Huh…sounds like the amount of fans Mary D’s tries to squeeze in pre-match…

 

I text one of my footballing buddies to tell him, knowing that he usually attends most European away games. He was sat at Manchester Airport at the time and replied, “Tut…and I wasn’t going to have a drink either”. Yeah right Steve...

The Club’s PR Manager has promised Manchester City fans a warm welcome...

 

Looks like a fun time will be had by all then!

Here’s hoping for a positive result AND performance from City. I’ve no idea about Plzen and so just cannot even try to predict an outcome - just gonna sit back and (hopefully) enjoy…