4 back-to-back leagues games now; 3 away from home and the first of those sees us travel to the highest league ground in the country tonight, all before another away game in the F.A. Cup.
I just hope home-sickness doesn’t set in as well as everything else that’s going on at the moment…
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| The Hawthorns |
Predicted line-up, subs and outcome:
(Number correct from the starting line-up in the last game: 10/11).
Fluid 4-1-4-1 / 4-5-1 / 4-3-3:
____________________Jesus____________________
_Sterling________________________________Silva_
____________Foden_________Gundogan_________
____________________Rodri____________________
Zinchenko_____________________________Cancelo
____________Stones_________Dias______________
___________________Ederson___________________
Subs: Steffen, Mendy, Walker, Laporte, Fernandinho, Palmer, Mahrez, Torres, Delap.
Ederson retakes the gloves after F.A. Cup action at the weekend.
A complete change of back 4 from last Saturday too – in comes Oleksandr, John, Ruben & Joao.
Rodders to roam ahead of those and ahead of the Spaniard, is a likely 4 of Raheem, Phil, Ilkay & Bernardo.
Gabriel heads the lot.
Zack returns to the bench as back-up stopper; Benjamin, Kyle - who may be fit enough to ease his way back in from the bench follow a knock to his hip - & Aymeric make up the defensive options from the side. As for the rest, I’m going for Fernandinho, Cole, Riyad, Ferran and, I think, Liam; who might be included in ‘the 9’ in case our hosts put up 2 big ‘banks of 4’ and we need an alternative attack strategy.
Notable absences:
- Eric Garcia – Not selected.
- Nathan Ake – Still working his way back from injury; still not quite ready for a return to the match-day squad.
- Kevin De Bruyne – Hamstring injury or thigh injury? I’ve seen reports stating both. Regardless, he’s anywhere between 3-½ to 5-½ weeks away from a return.
- Sergio Aguero – Still isolating AND, apparently, suffering a little with the effects of Covid-19.
Do I agree with Pep’s (predicted) line-up?
Result? Well, it doesn’t take a football expert to see that our hosts are struggling…badly. ‘Mr Fix It’ has come in and there have been some positive signs of late…some.
Of course, it takes time to turn around such a struggling side – it’s the same set of players (plus 2 recent additions in Andy Lonergan & Robert Snodgrass) who must have been feeling pretty flat as their new boss arrived. And although their spirits will have been lifted by an excellent 2-3 away win at local rivals, Wolves; they’ve still ‘shipped in’ plenty of goals and have been beaten in all other games since Sam Allardyce’s arrival; including being knocked out of the F.A. Cup by bottom-half-of-League-1-table, Blackpool.
I think we’ll face a feisty home side though and I’m not saying for one minute that this will be easy – I’ve seen all-too-often how a ‘Sam side’ can frustrate the hell out of better opposition and then, quite often, sucker-punch them to get the win. We need to be ‘on our metal’ tonight (8:15pm KO GMT).
But a lot of our first-choice players have a well-deserved and much-needed rest last Saturday and our confidence & momentum is very high at the moment.
Work hard…again, and we’ll come back with 3 points as well as jumping to the top of the league, for however long that may be. It’s a City win for me.
Last season’s, corresponding pre-match prediction and result…
Prediction: N/A
Result: N/A
Expected weather conditions during the game: Although most of the day’s showers should have moved on / fizzled out by the time the ref blows his whistle to start the match, it’ll be a damp-feeling night in the West Midlands. Nothing that will affect gameplay though – the temperature is a cool 5C and there’s just a light, southerly breeze.
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