Fully rested & refreshed following a break from men’s football, at least (I very much enjoyed watching the women’s Euros and…WELL DONE THE LIONESSES!); I’m raring to go and can’t wait for our new campaign to begin.
Here’s what’s on my [particularly] ‘looking forward to seeing' list (in no specific order):
- Seeing Erling Haaland – AKA, The Terminator – in a City Shirt tearing up the oppo’s defences. What a beast of a player he looks; a City fan too and when hearing him speak, his steely focus in general and his enthusiasm for joining the team he has supported since he was small, if he ever was, is infectious.
- Seeing Julian Alvarez in a City shirt. Ever since we were heavily linked with the Argentine international towards the back end of 2021 and since his signing in late January 2022, I have watched many-a-video of the forward and have been very excited ever since. I was keeping my fingers crossed that he wasn’t going to be loaned out for the season that lies ahead; but confident that he wouldn’t be considering his age & experience ‘under his belt’ already, as well as his impressive stats so far. I described him to a City fan mate of mine who hadn’t watch his footage as a combination of Sergio Aguero, David Silva and with a bit of Georgi Kinkladze about him too. Understandably, his one word response was…”Wow”. In fact, talkSPORT’s South American correspondent, Tim Vickery, described him a few weeks later as, “…a striker with the soul of a midfielder”, which sort of backs up my feelings about the 22-year-old, versatile forward. Just can’t wait.
Continuing with the theme of new signings…
- Seeing if, perhaps, Kalvin Phillips might be tried, occasionally, as a midfielder further up the pitch and not just as a defensive midfielder / cover for Rodri. By all accounts, it was a role he quite often played before Marcelo Bielsa took charge of Leeds United; converting, as he soon did, the Leeds-born man into a deeper-lying midfielder. It’s a position he said he’s comfortable playing and, apparently, has a decent shot on him from open play; as well as being quite handy at free-kick-taking too. Having now seen three pre-season games; on the other hand, perhaps Kalvin could be use WITH Rodders in the position Bernardo Silva is currently being ask to play in…
- Seeing the competition between Ederson & new-keeper signing, Stefan Ortega. Without going overboard, as some City fans online have done in recent months; I agree that Ed perhaps-needed a bigger threat behind him in order to keep him on his toes. We might, therefore, see an even better Brazilian international between our sticks this-coming season…but this German fella looks very good indeed too – a crackin’ free transfer in fact!
- Seeing the World Cup break not-having a detrimental effect on our lads / season.
- Seeing Ruben Dias back to his [first season] best; hoping he has less time out injured and, therefore, strengthening our defence even further, as league challengers improve their attacking threats.
- Seeing more of Kevin De Bruyne - hoping he has less injuries this season.
- Seeing Bernardo Silva in a City shirt after the summer transfer window closes (11:00pm BST, 1st September); hoping all that early summer “chatter”, which has re-surfaced in recent days, was / is just cheeky, skint / borrowing Barcelona trying to ‘stir things up’ and turn the soon-to-be 28-year old’s head.
- Seeing more of Phil Foden in the starting 11.
- Seeing Cole Palmer being given more game time and hoping that foot injury he sustained last January isn’t one with long-lasting, underlying issues following reports that the club were, at one time, considering surgery.
- I did originally add that I was looking forward to-seeing more of James McAtee too but it seems like he’s being allowed to go out of loan; with several Championship sides, two or three Premier League clubs plus two non-English sides all being linked with 19-year-old attacking midfielder.
-
Seeing a big MASSIVE improvement
from Jack Grealish.
- Despite being our top scorer in all competitions last season; I have no qualms whatsoever in saying that I hope to see more consistency from new-contract-signing, Riyad Mahrez. No more performances where it appears as though he doesn’t have to put too much effort in, in order to get the end results; disappears completely in some games or, even, appears to forget what he’s supposed to do at times.
Regarding the last two, in-losing Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus; whatever you, the reader, thought of them both, there are a lot of goals & assists we’ve lost there and it’s up to the rest of the players – and not just the new-summer signings – to step up and fill-in those gaps.
- Perhaps seeing a possible formation tweak on occasions to allow our new signings to play to their strengths? Possibly-also seeing both Erling & Julian on the pitch at the same time, which sounds utterly mouth-watering to me, by the way. As long as these tweaks work, of course, I think ‘other options’ for us can only be a very good thing indeed, as more & more teams try to ‘suss out’ ways to stop us.
- See us sign a specialist left-back / left-wing back before the summer transfer window closes. How long has it been since we’ve had one?!
We’ve seen both Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez with varying degrees of success last Saturday evening and both were on the pitch at the same time from the 58th minute, which was both bold and refreshing to see; as well as being the right thing to do at the time, I thought.
Sadly, I also witnessed no improvement whatsoever from Jack Grealish in that very match at least but I do accept that it’s very early doors in his second (pre)season with us. 🤞
Once we’ve heard from Pep in his pre-match press conference on Friday, I’ll get to work on and then release my pre-West Ham United piece. Thanks for ‘tuning in’.
 |
| Solidarity |
No comments:
Post a Comment