…in the league, at least; two sides desperate to get back on track, points wise, for their own reasons.
A quick look back…
For reasons I won’t bore you with, I didn’t even get to listen to most of our New Year’s Eve game at home to Everton and, therefore, I suppose I’m least qualified to have an opinion on that particular match.
However, there were are highlights to watch; there were pundits & fans who watched the full 103 minutes for me to listen to (and I heard a lot of ‘em) and plenty of fan comments online to read also; all in addition to the first 15 minutes and last 25 (including injury time) that I did manage to catch on the radio.
So, how did all of that – and 2 dropped home points – leave me feeling?
Well, for a start I share other City fans’ frustrations at a side who time-wasted in so many ways; not least that around half their players appeared to come down with cramp! I also share the irritations at a referee who allowed so much shenanigans and at a visiting side who clearly set out to smother the game. It sounded like a damp, dour affair for all those who had paid high prices to be…“entertained”.
However, we can’t keep JUST blaming other factors whenever we don’t win – we have to look at ourselves from time to time. Perhaps, collectively these days, that’s something we don’t do enough of, sometimes. There were quite a number of Blues who were doing the ‘blame game’ but I also heard a LOT of fans who were looking in the Manchester City mirror and were asking some good questions.
1. Jack Grealish has been mostly played as a left-winger since he swapped claret & blue for sky blue & white and I agree with others when they say that he’s just not an out & out winger. He doesn’t have pace to burn; he often can’t beat a man from the touchline and then-often ends up stopping and passing backwards. Him-being-there just slows us down. But I’m not going to make this into a ‘blame Jack’ thing; far from it.
2. Having been a little shocked at our starting line-up against Leeds where, as it turned out, I had little to fear; I caught myself holding my breath when I saw ‘the 11’ an hour before we kicked off against The Toffees last Saturday afternoon. I know Nathan Ake is in very good form on the left of our defence and I KNOW that Rico Lewis is showing the world how good he is at such a young age and that he’s likely to go on to be a full-cap, international player…but this game was crying out for the reintroduction of both Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo; albeit I’ve since learnt why Kyle did not start (read on below). At home against a side that was always going to need a can opener to prise them open; we needed that pace & craft on both flanks in this not-so-new-age of wing-backs being more attacking than defending.
3. Although Riyad Mahrez had a decent-sounding game in which one publication, at least, gave him a “good” 7; regular readers will know that I’ve said, more than once, that whenever we have both Jack & Riyad on the flanks at the same time we don’t look anywhere NEAR as fluid, creative or dangerous as we do with different personnel in place…and that we usually have to bring on more-threatening players in order to rectify the issue. Huh, speaking of which…
4. Pep…genius Pep. Love the guy. Best manager we’ve ever had and can hardly fault him. It will be a very sad day when he leaves us...but he’ll be leaving us in a far, far better place than before he joined. Legend. However (I bet you saw that word coming a mile of), like every other human being on the planet, nobody’s perfect. For me, he has two bad traits. 1. He has ‘big game’ ‘head wobble’ moments where he appears to over analyse the opposition and make unnecessary players choices & formations accordingly; more often than not seeing it blow up in his face. 2. This occasional, REALLY irritating peculiarity that he has of not-wanting to make changes when, to nearly everyone else watching, certain matches are SCREAMING out for it! Not just changes for changes sake out of desperation but ones that are so bloody obvious to any seasoned watchers of football. It’s a kind of stubbornness in him that we’ve seen on rare occasions – seemingly wanting to just let his preferred, starting 11 on the day just keep ‘at it’ and ‘at it’ and ‘at it’ in the hope that his ‘Plan A’ was the correct choice. Now I know we eventually played 13 minutes past ‘the 90’ last Saturday but, flippin’ ‘eck’; 87 minutes before making a change at 1-1?! 87 minutes when we had Kyle Walker, Joao Cancelo, Ilkay Gundogan, Phil Foden & World Cup star and winner, Julian Alvarez, on the bench?! 87 minutes when you’re allowed FIVE subs?!
Moving on…
v Chelsea
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| Stamford Bridge |
There’s plenty of room for error, here, as I try to get inside Guardiola’s post-World Cup head…and how is anyone supposed to have a chance when he admits, as he did yesterday, that he also looks at body language on the training pitch and “makes notes” / team selection accordingly?
Predicted line-up, subs and outcome:
(Number correct from the starting line-up in the last game: 7/11).
Fluid 4-1-4-1 / 4-5-1 / 4-3-3:
____________________Haaland____________________
__Foden_______________________________Alvarez__
_____________________________De Bruyne_________
_________Gundogan_____________________________
_____________________Rodri_____________________
Cancelo___________________________________Lewis
_____________Ake_____________Stones____________
____________________Ederson____________________
Subs: Ortega, Walker, Akanji, Laporte, Phillips, Grealish, Palmer, Mahrez & Silva.
Ederson has the gloves.
Slight tweak in the back 4? Did Joao Cancelo display good body language on the training pitch? To both question I say, who the ‘eck knows other than Pep himself. Neck out? I’m going for Joao to get his first minutes following his international duty; with Nathan, John & Rico making up the rest of our back-line. Aymeric is apparently making progress following whatever little niggles he’s had recently and will be assessed again today. We were also informed just yesterday that Kyle’s on-the-pitch absence has been due to little niggles too; along with a general lack of match fitness. Apparently, the England man impressed his manager in training yesterday for the first time in a while in terms of intensity, I think he was alluding to.
Rodders to sit the deepest of our midfielders but I get a feeling that with Ilkay seeing most of our last game from the bench; the German international just might help his Spanish club teammate out with some defensive duties tonight. Should I be right, that will allow Phil, Kevin and quite-possibly Julian – in addition to Joao & Rico – to plough forward and wreak havoc.
Helping out with the havoc-wreaking is Erling ‘up top’.
Stefan is the reserve stopper; Kyle, Manuel & Aymeric are the replacement defender options on the side. Kalvin, Jack, Cole, Riyad & Bernardo are the midfielders / wingers in ‘the 9’.
Notable absences:
- Sergio Gomez – Not selected.
- Ruben Dias – Still out for an unspecified period of time with a hamstring injury sustained in his last match for Portugal.
Do I agree with Pep’s (predicted) line-up?
Result? My headline & subheading focus on league form, so let’s look at both side’s ‘last 10’ starting with our hosts; all of which are under their current manager, Graham Potter.
Chelsea: W W W D D L L L W D
It would appear that the ex-Brighton manager ‘hit the ground running’ when he arrived at SW6; with 3 back-to-back league wins that followed 1-2 away win in the Champions League, which was Graham’s first ever game in charge of the Stamford Bridge Blues.
Then…what? What’s happened? 7 league outings with just 1 win, all of which included a League Cup defeat to us too. I’ve only briefly heard & read some comments from Chelsea fans in recent weeks and it basically boils down to them simply playing “awful” a lot of the time; a word I’ve both heard & seen in their comments more than once. Others include how, with a team packed full of talent, Mr Potter just needs to find a way of getting them to ‘click’. Could I possibly suggest that he looks back to his first 4 games in charge? I know, I know; it’s not that simple…
Manchester City: W W W L W W W L W D
And what about us? “Punctuated”, would appear to be the most appropriate word to use. Just when it looked like we were about to string together another one of our now-famous undefeated runs…the automatic brakes appeared to activate. Liverpool away, where we could have played better and had chances to score / win, and then both Brentford & Everton doing similar numbers on us to interrupt any such run of league form. It might not sound too much to be concerned about on the face of it but – and let’s not say this lightly fellow Blues - it’s left us 8 points ‘off the pace’, albeit with-us-having this game in hand, and just 1 point from 4th; 3 points from 5th, with a game or two in hand over those below us also.
Time for socks to be pulled up…and correct personnel to be selected / subs to be made with more than 3 minutes to spare, could I suggest also.
I think with just a single league victory in their last 7 league fixtures, Graham Potter must-surely be feeling some pressure at least; especially after coming away from struggling Forest with just a point in their last outing. If he and his players are feeling the strain, any bad start they might have against us on Thursday night might just ‘turn the crowd’. That’s what we have to do from the start – put early pressure on the home side…but also make it count in terms of converting our chances. Do that and we can most-definitely add to their current woes.
One last reference to our form – we don’t often suffer two back-to-back losses but if we’re not careful; we could, at least, suffer two back-to-back ‘no wins’. That, at the very least, would be a big opportunity missed with Arsenal & Newcastle United drawing their clash on Tuesday night; meaning that a win for us would push us to within 5 points before we face The Gunners twice. Now that WOULD paint a slightly different-looking picture.
Despite our hosts struggling more than we are in the league to find any kind of run, this isn’t going to be an easy task for us. However, they are hindered by injuries to three key defenders in Ben Chilwell, Reece James and summer signing Wesley Fofana and if we can get at ‘em early and make it count, as I say; I think it’s very winnable. That’s what I’m going for – it’s 3 points to the sky blues (or more likely Fizzy Yellow & Parisian Night) for me.
Last season’s, corresponding pre-match prediction and result:
Prediction: Draw
Result: Won
(Pre-match blog posting from that game)
Expected weather conditions during the game: Overcast but there’s very little chance of any rain landing on heads. As with many places in Europe at the moment, it’s flippin’ mild too for 8:00pm in early January at 11C! There will be a brisk south-westerly breeze blowing over but nothing that will affect the ball nor make it feel chillier for watching fans.
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| Solidarity |
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