You don’t go to a home game for 55 days and then 3
come at once! Having (very unusually)
missed both Norwich City and CSKA Moscow
Final moan…
It can’t just be me who feels
deprived of club football - of course it
was my (joint) decision to go away on a small break and miss the Norwich game
and it was me who bought a dog who is so terrified of fireworks that ‘dog minding’
took priority over the CSKA game. But these dammed international breaks! Fact: City have played just 11 League
games as we near the end of November; England
So let’s Ashley Young dive straight into tomorrow’s game
Spurs were one of the teams
I thought would be a real threat this season. And, of course, they’re no mugs;
lying as they do one point and one place above us in 7th after more
than a quarter of the season gone.
But, fortunately for us and just LIKE us, they are just as
frustratingly inconsistent and unpredictable this season. Ooops…there are those word again!
They’ve brought in a heck of a lot of talent around about the same time as the
sale of Gareth Bale and for that we have to be
wary. We certainly have to be ‘on our game’ on Sunday.
Spurs too have a nasty habit of peeing me off even on our
home patch - I’ve never liked them (probably ever since the 1981 F.A. Cup Final games) and they have a horrible
knack of ‘repeat offending’. Another moan
about the international breaks is that you never know how your team is going to
perform after most of them spending the best part of a fortnight apart – but I
suppose all teams are in the same boat there…
Good news is that apart from the 3 we all knew about – Vinny, David and Stevan – it would appear that we have a full squad to
pick from to face Tottenham. Apparently Nastasic
and Fernandinho have both fully trained and
would appear to be fully back in the reckoning for tomorrow vital clash.
So, this is my predicted line-up for the 1:30pm (BST) KO:
4-4-2:
__________________Negredo____________
___________Aguero____________________
___________________Toure____________
___________Fernandinho_______________
Clichy___Nastasic___Demichelis___Zabaleta
______________Pantilimon______________
A narrow win for City. They don’t score many but they’re
very mean at the back too.
Surely with Silva missing Navas has to start at home.
However, I suppose there’s a decent argument that Milner could start instead;
adding more nitty-gritty work-rate to our engine room, especially as Spurs
might opt to ‘pack the midfield’ away from home. Using James would probably
narrow us slightly [if he was asked to ‘dig in’ with Yaya and the Brazilian];
meaning that Aguero might sit deeper and to the right with Nasri in support in
more of a 4-3-3 formation. But I think he’ll go with Jesus for this one.
Of course speculation is rife about the goalie situation and
although I’ve gone with Costel once again, my spider sense is tingling just
ever so slightly that Pellegrini might spring a
bit of a surprise and, perhaps, stick the England man back in. It’s 50/50’ish but, as I say, I’m edging that
he’ll stick with the Romanian who, after all, has done nothing wrong to deserve
being dropped.
I'm assuming that Joleon is still gonna be out of favour and SURELY Jack will now get 'the nod' ahead of Javi Garcia on the bench.
Full steam ahead!
With no Champions League
worries now that we’ve qualified (assuming that Manuel has resigned himself to
finishing a respectful second to Bayern) we can
go ‘all out’ tomorrow and for the foreseeable domestic fixtures. Footy – PROPER
footy that is – is back with a bang! Have you seen December’s fixtures! 9 games
in 28 days!
A quick W, D, L prediction then to see where we might lay as we
head into 2014 with an away game at Swansea City
on 1st January.
Tottenham Hotspur (H) - Win
Viktoria Plzen (H) - Win
West Bromwich Albion (A) - Win (Stevan available?)
Southampton (A) - Draw (David back?)
Bayern Munich (A) - Lose
Arsenal (H) - Win (Vincent back?)
Fulham (A) - Win
20 more points in the league (probably finishing 2013 in 2nd
or 3rd place), in the Champions League knock-out stages, of course, and
through to the semi-final of the League Cup.
That would do for me at around the half-way stage. God knows what'll happen from January onwards though; according to the gutter, rumour-mongering press over the last 2 weeks most of our players are set to leave us in the next transfer window!
Right, let’s ‘Google map’ to remind myself of how to get there tomorrow…
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