Manyoo: A side who have attacking players who can hurt opposition sides and, annoyingly, seem to get results they might not otherwise deserve; a midfield that is largely woeful, even by their own fans’ admission, and a dodgy defence to say the very least; confounded recently by a recent injury to their summer signing, Raphael Varane.
Manchester City: A side who, without a ‘recognised striker’ most of the time, have an array of attacking midfield/wing talent who, on their day, can all-too-often steamroller sides and score goals-aplenty but who can, annoyingly, also misfire; often needing around 25 shots just to get 8 ‘on target’. We also have a defence that can largely ‘keep a steady ship’…but are-also known to have iceberg-crash moments that can unsettle the crew.
So, for me – and to repeat – both sides have attacking threat and goals in ‘em, in their own, individual styles and, therefore, I think the winner will be the one who can stay more solid at the back.
v Manyoo
 |
| Cold Trafford |
Predicted line-up, subs and outcome:
(Number correct from the starting line-up in the last game: 7/11).
Fluid 4-1-5-0 / 4-6-0 / 4-3-3:
______________________________________________
Grealish__________________________________Jesus
___________________De Bruyne __________________
___________Foden______________Silva____________
_____________________Rodri____________________
Cancelo_________________________________Walker
___________Stones_____________Dias____________
____________________Ederson___________________
Subs: Steffen, Zinchenko, Ake, Fernandinho, Lavia, Gundogan, Palmer, Mahrez, Sterling.
Ederson has the gloves for this one.
There is some doubt over Kyle for this fixture after he took a blow to a foot towards the end of his last outing and, so, I’m just gonna have to do a 50/50 guess as-to-whether he will be in or not. I’ve ‘stuck him in there’ and, if I’m right, the rest of the back line should read Joao, John & Ruben.
Rodders is the ‘deep midfielder’; Jack, Phil, Kevin, Bernardo & Jesus are the likely attacking midfielders / wingers ahead of the Spaniard.
Zack, who has just extended his contract, is the reserve stopper; Oleksandr & Nathan are the only two defensive replacement options from the side. Fernandinho, Romeo, Ilkay, Cole, Riyad & Raheem make up the midfield / wing / attacking choices from ‘the 9’.
Notable absences:
- Aymeric Laporte – Suspended for this game following his ‘last man’ red card in our last league outing.
- Benjamin Mendy – Suspended by the club until further notice.
- Ferran Torres – Out with a foot injury until around Christmas time.
Do I agree with Pep’s (predicted) line-up?
Mostly…but no.
I have to say that, just like a growing number of other Manchester City fans, I’ve started to question in recent weeks just what Jack Grealish is bringing to our game.
If I was to answer that myself, I would say that he brings a high degree of skill & trickery and that he does, in fairness, already link up quite well with his teammates in terms of accurate, short-sharp passing in the ‘attacking left quadrant’…but that he appears to slow our attack down considerably on the left flank and needs to learn how to be a bit more…’Phil Foden direct’, in my humble opinion.
One fan online after the Club Bruges home victory the other day summed it up perfectly when he likened the signing of Jack to that of Rodney Marsh.
I think he needs to be pulled from the side on Saturday and have a period of re-training / re-tuning so that he can, hopefully, learn to add a bit more ‘direct dynamism’ to his array of established footwork skills.
Who would I put in his place? I think we need the intelligence of Ilkay ‘in there’ and in the middle on Saturday with Phil terrorising the home side down the left-hand-side.
Result? Well, I’ve said most of what I think in my rather lengthy subheading but what I’ll add to that is that we need our ‘big guns’ firing on Saturday. And by…‘big guns’, I’m largely giving a nod to Kevin De Bruyne – we need him back to his near-or-very-best as soon as possible.
I’m not bothered about whether their manager goes with a 5-3-2 or a 4-2-3-1 in his recent tinkering of his side as they struggle to find consistency; we have far better players than they have, overall, which should mean that they-be-more concerned about us than we are of them.
However, they do have ‘killer danger men’ in their side who can get a goal out of seemingly nothing and that’s what we have to be right on top of. Do that, and game is ours for the taking.
On a side note, Pep was in a weird mood after the Club Bruges game, I thought; seemingly not happy with this early kick-off time after our midweek Champions League match, would be my guess; as well as the guess of at least one other Sports Journalist, so I read the following day. I hope that doesn’t affect that wonderfully-bald head of his heading going into this fixture; causing him to have one of those ‘big game’ head-wobble moments.
Anyhoo…I also have to say that I’ve got a sneaky feeling that our hosts from just west of Manchester won’t end the match with 11 men, for some reason, and if I’m right; that could help our cause also.
Either way, I’m going for a Manchester City win and a 6-point gap between us and the men from M16 come-around 2:20pm.
Last season’s, corresponding pre-match prediction and result…
Prediction: Win
Result: Draw
(Pre-match blog posting from that game)
Expected weather conditions during the game: Wet ‘n’ windy, which should give the pitch a little ‘zip’. 12C is the temperature.
No comments:
Post a Comment