I’m sure our Sunday hosts will be feeling a little hard done to after they were denied a share of the points against the-then league leaders, Arsenal, last Tuesday night.
Breaching The Gunners’ defence 3 times should serve as a waning for us, especially in our current, delicate state.
Half-hiding behind a cushion; a quick look back at our last game against Aston Villa… š
Outthought, outpaced and outfought. Well done Villa, who totally deserved the win. I think we got away with just a 1-0 defeat.
Our manager admitted, and rightly so, that we deserved the defeat and he added that he needs to, “…change the dynamic” of our play with the players we have. That will be very interesting to see indeed from a manager who, generally speaking, has such strong convictions on-how he likes to set up his sides.
One note of comfort for fellow Blues from me is that, before the World Cup break last season, I didn’t think we were playing particularly well and were behind leaders, Arsenal, by a good-number of points, if memory serves. Then, around about mid-to-late January, we ‘clicked’ and went on to-both ‘chase down’ The Gunners and eventually overtake them to win the league for the 3rd, successive season…not to mention the F.A. Cup and Champions League too! š¤
‘Hold steady’, City fans, and trust in Pep, his staff and his players. By the way, I loved Pep’s talk in the first half of his pre-match press conference on Friday.
 |
| Kenilworth Road |
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 (occasional 3-6-1? Or will that system now get ditched?):
____________________Haaland____________________
Grealish___________________________________Silva
____________________________Foden_____________
____________Kovacic____________________________
_____________________Rodri_____________________
Ake______________________________________Walker
_____________Dias_____________Stones___________
____________________Ederson____________________
Subs: Ortega, Lewis, Akanji, Gvardiol, Phillips, Nunes, Doku, Bobb & Alvarez.
Ederson, hoping not to concede his 18th league goal in 16 league matches, continues to be the custodian of the gloves.
I’m going for a slightly changed back-4 of Nathan, Ruben, John & Kyle.
Rodders is back, thankfully, and steps right back into his place just ahead of the defence.
Ahead of the Spaniard, we might see something ever so slightly different – this could be that change in dynamic Pep was talking about. I’m going for no Julian Alvarez to start and an additional, deeper, specialist midfielder instead and that might come in the form of Mateo Kovacic. IF I’m correct, I think he will be joined by Phil in a slightly more advanced but central position, with Jack & Bernardo flanking.
Erling ‘up top’ (I admired his defensive work rate on Wednesday night but I’d like to see him back amongst regular goals again soon).
Stefan is the reserve keeper; Rico, Manuel & Josko are the defenders in ‘the 9’. Kalvin & Matheus are two midfielders on the side hoping to see some minutes. Not for the first time in recent weeks; not one journalist asked, in the pre-match press conference, about the availability of players who have a question mark above them. In this instance, Doku is the player in question. Therefore, I’m going for the 21-year-old to be largely over his recent knock but not enough for a starting place. Oscar & Julian join the Belgium international as wingers / forwards in reserve.
Notable absences:
- Sergio Gomez – Not selected.
- Kevin De Bruyne – Continues to work in the background with the physios monitoring his progress; hopes continue for a January return at the latest. The very latest news from our manager, in fact, indicates that our Belgium international midfielder is, at least, starting to “run” as he continues to train alone and he is also included in our Club World Cup squad.
Do I agree with Pep’s (predicted) line-up?
Result? I have to be honest, I’ve no idea about Luton in terms of how their current side play nor how their manager likes to set up, other than what I’ve read when-doing some research, which I have no way of corroborating without sitting through large amounts of footage from their season so far.
I get the feeling that despite still-having patchy form; generally speaking they are slowly finding their Premier League legs and have been showing signs of improvement. Certainly their last home result to Arsenal, albeit it a defeat, shows that they have spirit, determination and the ability to stick 3 goals past a top side.
As for us, at the very least we need to ‘fine tune’ ourselves and going off our last battering, perhaps-even a complete re-think as Guardiola has hinted.
- We’ve GOT to start defending better both individually & collectively.
- We’ve GOT to step up and/or adapt to sides who give us little time on the ball / press us with pace & energy.
- We’ve GOT to stop this trait of taking our foot off the accelerator in the second half of matches, particular when we’re in front – we have to learn, once more, how to kill teams off / put games out of sight!
- And despite the number of goals we’re scoring, we’ve GOT to improve our ‘on target’ rate and stop wasting chances that we are, thankfully, still creating for ourselves.
It’s an unfamiliar ground for our manager & players and despite the stands being a bit of a mishmash and small, they are close-up to the players and gives me the impression that the stands really do amplify the home fans’ support. Playing conditions could be quite rough too but there’s more on that below.
Possibly in a different way to our last 4 league outings, it’s another toughie for sure and if we’re not ‘on it’, we could find ourselves in even more trouble. However, I have to believe that with some soul searching that I believe has been happening within the camp since Wednesday night, we should come through this with a win.
It’s 3-points to the Blues.
Last season’s, corresponding pre-match prediction and result:
Prediction: N/A
Result: N/A
Expected weather conditions during the game: After getting a soaking in the early part of the day on Saturday, rain returns to wet the pitch further from late Sunday morning. Worse still is that it’s forecasted to get really heavy for a couple of hours before kick-off. Albeit no longer ‘storm force’, there are some strong winds too over those low stands of theirs. Not pleasant conditions at all when-trying to get your game back on track. I don’t know what Luton’s pitch is like generally but I can already hear the excuses from some City quarters…
 |
| Solidarity |
No comments:
Post a Comment