Manchester City v Tottenham Hotspur
Saturday 18th October 2014, 12.45pm KO
Barclays Premier League
Live on BTSport1HD
Referee: Jonathan Moss
There has always been something different about Manchester City v Tottenham Hotspur as a fixture. Just saying out aloud, it sounds different, it rolls of the tongue, there is a mystique and a magic to this fixture quite unlike any other fixture. The big one is obviously the red vermin down the road just outside the city limits, but after that, the old ‘rivals’ Stockport County…Bolton Wanderers… Macclesfield Town….they’re just not in our atmosphere anymore. Who else makes the blood boil?
Liverpool? No I just don’t buy into that anti-scouse feeling that the rag raging mob will have you believe is built as animosity between cities. I hate them on the day, the media love in for Brendan is borderline scouse porn and their captain slipping to hand us the title couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person if Shrek himself had fire a hat-trick into his own net when we faced them at the Swamp, but even know already so far behind us, I don’t care enough to hate.
Arsenal? There is a modern hatred as they’re support takes to the message boards lamenting the purchasing of the title and using Gael Clichy and Sami Nasri to do so, as if signing Nicklas Bendtnar had not been a choice and Sylvain Wiltord, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp had all been discovered playing on Hackney Marshes. No, in fact when those three were winning titles for fun, there was the begrudging respect as they waltzed through our defence annually on their way to a thrashing that we could simply not prevent. Although the guff that they’re somehow a better club and above it all because 60,000 people who don’t know any better part with four figures to get stuffed by the first decent side that arrives at the Emirates grates, they’ve taken their mantel of comical failure to new levels in search of a title on too many occasions to really hate.
Chelsea? Not even on the rader…despite the return of Mourinho making even the most balanced of broadsheets fawn over him as if it will somehow prevent him falling out with the Russian after three and half years and do one to PSG. How far short Chelsea really fall short of the radar was confirmed when long time City nemesis (and member #1839 of carving a career in football by scoring against City club) Frank Lampard signed for City…and not one person was bothered!
No, I’ve always hated Spurs and I would go out on a limb and suggest that most City fans are the same. For every Johnny Macken winner at the Lane there has been three offside Steed Malbranque League Cup quarter final winners and half a dozen Robbie Kane stoppage time penalties. In addition, it’s maybe because they’ve been somewhat unjustifiably the media darlings for much of the 20 years for seemingly no other reason than they’ve spend literally billions on players for only sporadic expense whilst playing the odd bit of decent football on a pitch that’s only slight bigger than The Temple on Oxford Road. That spell under Harry Redknapp shall remain un-mentioned for fear of this preview taking longer to read than it will to play the actual game.
Almost 20 years ago to the day
I’m not old enough to remember Ricky Villa waltzing through the City defence at Wembley or watch them come to Maine Road in 91 and beat us in the FA Cup. My first memory of Tottenham Hotspur was coming to Moss Side in Oct 1994 (the 22nd, almost 20 years to the day) armed to the teeth with Jurgen Klinsmann, Ilie Dumitrescu (in googling him to make sure I got the spelling correctly I’d actually managed to get the first name wrong!) and George Popescu. Spurs sponsored by Holsten in their distinctive all Navy Blue away kit they’ve never quite replicated and the Kippax open, bare and exposed to the elements on a typically wet Manchester Day, these memories all feel weeks rather than decades old. The video is on Youtube and I’ve posted before in previous previews, if you’ve not seen it you must go out of your way to see one of the most breathless attacking performances a City side produced in the 90s as Rosler, Quinn and particularly Paul Walsh ran riot.
Side Note and Slight Tangent: Of the 22 Premier League clubs that season how many of the shirt sponsors can you remember? I had a go and could remember about 20 with a bit of help with the lads at work. My Favourite…Elonex but can you remember what they did?
The Peter Andre of Football Clubs
Fast forward to the modern era of football the billions that have been pumped into the game since, mostly spent at White Hart Lane as Daniel Levy has tried to prove that he’s some kind of modern day Gordon Gecko, snapping up any player that shows the slight bit of promise or ability. I was going to try and list some of the awful transfers and the sheer millions wasted in this preview but it’s so long that entire sections of the Wikipedia are dedicated to Tottenham’s transfer policy. For every Luka Modric they’ve found they’ve wasted millions in transfer fee and wages on a dozen players such as Rohan Ricketts, Callum Davenport, John Bostock, Chris Gunter, Danny Rose, Kyle Naughton, Alan Hutton (NINE MILLION POUNDS!!!), Ryan Nelson, Louis Saha and Andy Reid. Does this ever get brought to question, transferring players across the globe like some kind of human trafficking business…when FIFA put together the worldwide player database they weren’t thinking of Jorge Mendes and Pini Zhavi smuggling players into countries in the back of lorries they were thinking of Levy his Del-boy like approach to bulk buying of young players in their development stages and having them rot in a Spurs reserve team!
Worse for Spurs they get themselves a decent player, get themselves on the cusp of achievement and snatch the hands off to the first suitor that comes knocking for any talent they’ve actually produced and then spend the millions like some jilted ex-lover convincing themselves that they are better off without that person before jumping into bed with the first person that shows any interest. How the Gareth Bale money was wasted on Roberto Soldado (because he scores penalties), Erik Lamela (one good season in Serie A where the average age is 46) and Paulinho (£17 million!) I will never know.
The reward for all this 6-0 thrashings at the Etihad and 5-1 at home to the present Champions of England, reviled for their ‘spending power’ and ‘massive squad’ (of 19 but let us not quibble and ruin the party line for others) against a City side who, having shed Carlos Tevez, Kolo Toure and Wayne Bridge added the unfancied, unheralded Fernandinho, Jesus Navas, Martin Demechelis and Alvaro Negredo whom out of the four only Navas was a current recognised international. The Navas signing in particular was ridiculed because Navas as a 19 year old had been famous for being homesick and the media, assuming City hadn’t done their homework on the Sevilla winger, laid it on thick and fast. However, Navas chipped in with 4 league goals and 7 league assists in his 30 appearances, collected league and league cup winners medals whilst Erik Lamela simply stopped turning up at Spurs as the media’s favourite manager Tim Sherwood simply had no clue what to do with him. More Del Boy that Alan Sugar, eh Levy?
Oh, the Champions you say?
I recently changed roles at work (hence my lack of involvement on this site recently) and oh joys of joys despite being my new boss being Welsh he is a season ticket holder at the Swamp and has taken great delight in ‘enlightening’ me as to how poor a start we’ve had this season. “Your only four points ahead of us and we’ll catch you” said the ‘man’ who will be hence forth known as Slimer. “You can’t win the league now…” he roared as I tried to make his head explode with my mind. (He is the kind of tool who has not only paid actual money for Camel Gob’s book but also thinks I’m interested in knowing what’s in it)
A ridiculous statement; however although we had 13 points from seven games last season we are actually up in equivalent results against teams as we’ve turned defeats against Chelsea and Aston Villa into four points as we’ve already beaten Liverpool (lol Brendan), drawn with Chelsea and travelled to Arsenal. With the exception of the defeat to Stoke, which was an awful setback, we’ve made a better start to the season that we did last year. Fortunately despite the fact that Chelsea have steamrolled to the top of the table there is one thing that Mourinho can’t account for and that’s the fact that I’ve now added Costa, Fabregas and Hazard into my fantasy team which can only mean that all three are due a Torres-esque drops in form and season ending bouts of Ebola in the imminent future!
Prediction
You win one thing it becomes a catalyst to win more
There isn’t really much for scope for talking about team selection and shape as only Pellegrini will know what condition his players are in after the week long excursion around the world. In my own belief the first 8 weeks of the season are just about survival hoping you have plenty of momentum going into the long stretch of the season (which believe its three whole weeks until the next international break).
Having briefly watched the game Spurs game when they were at the Emirates and having seen the way Mauricio Pochettino set Spurs up I’m expecting them to come with the coaches parked whilst they try and hit us on the break, especially with the pace they’ve got and as we’ve seemed to have been very vulnerable to this recently.
Oh I guess that was a discussion on shape…if I’m Pellegrini I’m wanting to play the game with tempo, move the ball quickly and play the ball ahead of the player I’m aiming for, test Spurs’ nerve not to make a mistake and force them to chase the ball. In the games I’ve seen City, and I’ll be honest I’ve not seen every kick this season, but especially against Roma we looked cumbersome and laboured and we really lacked the movement off the ball at times. We need to inject energy into the game from the first whistle.
You want a Scoreline? A hard fought and not very pretty to watch 2-0
If you’ve read all the way down to here, thanks for sticking with it, if one of the admins could add to the main page and re-send me log in details I would really appreciate it. Peace.