…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
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?
Sure do!
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 |
