With only the league to concentrate on, this is not the ideal place to start our drive for fourth place. There is no doubt no harder place to visit in the league and this must be every team's hardest fixture. A cursory glance through the online football database website, soccerbase.com, shows that City's last win at Stamford Bridge came in the old second division during the 88/89 campaign and if you want to go back even further to find when City last did the league double over Chelsea, a scenario on the cards this time, then you will have to go back to the 51/52 season. So what realistically would be a success from tomorrow's game? I think everyone would be happy with a point, but a good performance that shows we can compete with the country's best team could be enough to instil confidence in the team and galvanise them for the final months.
The central media story for the weekend will inevitably be the Bridge/Terry reunion. The story on the front of the sports pages of the Guardian on the day the Bridge story broke (yesterday's paper) describes Bridge as "devastated" and "in bits" according to a 'source close to the player,' and it says he is considering snubbing a handshake with the Chelsea captain. I think it would be important for Bridge to confront this game, as it may help him overcome some of his personal problems, but for City's sake, he needs to have his mind in the right place. I am sure he will determined to do well tomorrow, but it is just a question of how he deals with that. This game and the England game with Egypt have probably come too early for him, but if, as Given and Mancini assert, he is ready then he will be important tomorrow for footballing reasons. Terry's apparent remorselessness have not helped matters.
The other big news of today is Adebayor's four match ban. At the beginning of the season one of the main intrigues was how Hughes was going to cope with the mass of strikers on the books and how he would keep them all happy. There was Adebayor, Tevez, Santa Cruz, Robinho, Bellamy, Benjani, and even Caicedo, Bojinov and Jo pre-loans. So it is perhaps a bit of a farce that Mancini is now looking at selection options of Tevez (fitness unknown), Santa Cruz (never fully fit) and Bellamy (who, by his own admission, shouldn't play twice a week and already has 120 minutes under his belt). It is now time for Santa Cruz to step up. Arguably, he was bought as cover for Adebayor for when he was at the African Cup of Nations, but to pay 18 million for a player who is unable to fulfil even these obligations is a bit of a concern. Fully fit, there is no doubting his ability (we've perhaps seen it once, or almost, against Sunderland in Hughes's last game) but we need to see it more often. He is Adebayor's natural replacement and is probably stronger as a targetman, so City could really do with him in the next four games, at least. I would like him to succeed and this is his big chance.
It will be interesting to see what kind of defence Mancini picks for this game. If Toure is fit again, will he be used for his knowledge of compatriot Didier Drogba? For all the criticism he gets, Toure performed very well against Drogba in the home game and he is undoubtedly the most dangerous of many threats to City. If City can defend like they did against Liverpool, we have a chance. Both teams could suffer from the midweek fixtures and Cech's absense is a plus for City. All in all, it is hard to expect too much from this fixture and a draw would be a great result to set up the push for fourth.
No comments:
Post a Comment