Early kick-off – straight to it…
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| Etihad Stadium |
Predicted line-up, subs and outcome:
(Number correct from the starting line-up in the last game: 10/11).
A very fluid 4-1-4-1 / 4-5-1 / 4-2-3-1:
____________________Haaland____________________
____________________________Foden_____________
Grealish___________________________________Doku
______________Silva_____________________________
_____________________Rodri_____________________
Gvardiol__________________________________Walker
_____________Dias_____________Akanji____________
____________________Ederson____________________
Subs: Carson, Ortega, Gomez, Lewis, Ake, Phillips, Bobb & Alvarez.
Ederson, despite him missing international duty due to an ankle / foot issue, to start. I could easily be wrong of course.
A back-4 of Josko, Ruben, Manuel & Kyle.
Rodders ahead of those, while I see an attacking midfield / wing quartet of Jack, Bernardo, perhaps in a ‘dual role’, Phil & Jeremy.
Erling, despite an ankle / foot issue himself recently, to head the lot.
Two keepers on the bench in the form of Scott & Stefan; a-returning Sergio (I could be wrong - he could still be out following an ankle ligament injury a few weeks back), Rico & Nathan are the defenders on the side. Kalvin is the only central midfielder in the 8 from a possible 9 on the bench, while Oscar & Julian provide attacking replacement options.
Notable absences:
With another training session set to take place following Pep’s pre-match press conference on Friday afternoon, there were, at the time, some doubts about player fitness / injury / availability. Therefore, I can only use my judgement about who might be unavailable for this afternoon’s game.
- John Stones – I’m guessing that this match might be too soon for the England defender following his latest thigh / muscular issue.
- Kevin De Bruyne – Continues to train alone whilst being assessed by physios after each & every session and, up to a couple of weeks ago, still wasn’t running…or running much at least. Fairly recent news indicated that he was “feeling good” and his manager got the impression that it wouldn’t be too long before Kevin was back training with his teammates. It sounded like a mid-to-late December return, rather than an initially-predicted January comeback, was a possibility; although that now appears a little optimistic to me. We shall see – we don’t want the process to be rushed only for him to break down again.
- Mateo Kovacic – Just like John, the Croatian international suffered a thigh problem and a report from a few days ago suggested that he might be out for 2 to 3 weeks. That’s what I’m running with.
- Matheus Nunes – Another muscular injury casualty, apparently, and I’m assuming that the Portuguese international will be ruled out also.
Do I agree with Pep’s (predicted) line-up?
I think Doku is the key in this fixture – while we’d have Jack on the left helping to hold the ball up and maintain possession against a side desperate to grab the ball and run like hell towards our goal; there’d be Jeremy on the other side hoping to use his pace to-quickly get behind an advanced Liverpool side in a City counter-attack move, which might catch our visitors out 🤞.
Result? A side in marginally better league form than we are; a side with the closest ‘plus goal difference’ to us, a side who have only been beaten once in the league and a side with a better league-defensive record than we have, which is often one of their weaknesses…but not this season so far.
Yes, if any City fan was thinking of walking into this game with a ‘chest out’, we-should-beat-these-at-home attitude, then they might want to think again.
Of course we are more than capable of doing so and we have taken all-3 points from Klopp’s reds in the past. However, I think this is going to be one hell of a difficult game following an international break and against an in-form & dangerous-attacking side…and that’s despite it being their manager’s ‘pet hate’ kick-off time (12:30pm GMT) following said-international pause.
I’ve genuinely not been paying too much attention to Liverpool in recent times; either this season or much of last. In fact, it sort of surprised me a little when they popped up just behind us in second place recently. I say surprised - I did have them being ‘there of there abouts’ at the end of the season; predicting them to finish the season 4th.
Therefore, I can only assume that they still play the same, gung-ho, all-attacking style for the opening ½-hour or so; producing wave after wave of fast-paced attacks in the hope that the opposition eventually capitulates. If so, that could be a shock to our system, especially ‘right from the off’ after a fortnight of not playing together. If we survive that potential, opening barrage relatively unscathed, that’s when I can see us hitting back with our own style of attacking play.
One encouraging statistic for us Blues is that, while our visitors have an outstanding home-league record this season of P6 W6 D0 L0 – F17 A2, their away record reads very differently as, P6 W2 D3 L1 – F10 A8.
As I’ve already suggested, I think this one will be a tight affair scoreline-wise; I think both sides will score but I’ve just got a feeling, despite strong leanings towards a draw, that we’ll edge it. It’s a narrow City win 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: Beautiful, bight, crisp day for a game of footy. It’ll be cold in the stands for sure, particularly when in the shade I would think, at just 3 or 4C but there’s no breeze and nothing but blue skies and sunshine above. Perfect weather for the players to exert themselves for 90+ minutes.
Solidarity
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