Manchester City v West Brom: Match Preview

Sunday 19th april, KO;3pm, Expected attendance; 41,000

City host west bromwich albion this sunday and will try and forget the heartache of crashing out of europe to hamburg sv in the quarter’s 4-3 on aggregate on thursday, which resulted in one supporter following through in block 210 at eastlands.
The second bogey team in succession to come up against manchester’s finest and mark hughes will be hoping for a similar performance to that of against hamburg which was agonisingly close to taking the tie into extra time, rather than the gutless performance of last sunday which brought are 6 home wins on the bounce run to a very abrubt end.
The citizen’s on paper should be too much for the baggies but how many times have we said that this season, west brom are actually worse on their travel’s than us and with top scorer bednar looking likely to miss out, we should win and win well which would almost certainly condemn W.B.A to championship football next year, which is a shame as unlike the inbreds of Stoke and Blackburn they have actually tried to play football how it should be played.

W.B.A stats
——–P—-W—D—L—F—A—GD—PTS—RANK
Away–16—1—4—11–8–29–21—-7——20

There only away win coming at the riverside back on the 27th september although in their last 5 aways they have drew 3 and lost 2, they have concede most at the end of each half with 10 in all competitions coming in the 40-45th minute and 8 in the 85-90th minute.
Top scorer is Roman Bednar with 6 and if games were only the second half they would be just of europa league qualification sitting in 8th place.

Head to Head;

City 50 W.B.A 49

The midland’s club have picked up more point’s from city than any other Premier League club (14) and will be looking to complete the double over us following the 2-1 at the hawthorns in december, worryingly west brom haven’t lost on city turf since 86.

Manager’s say;

Mark Hughes after thursday’s game said “Emotions can be draining as well as the physical exertions of a high intensity game like that, they are very low in the dressing room but we have a very big game on sunday, it’s a case of making sure we recover and clear our head’s ready to go again, we will take encouragement from this to finish the season well”

Tony Mowbray “From what i acn see there is only Robinho and Bellamy who are big money signing’s that mark has made, Jo and people like that came beforehand and alot of the player’s are sven signing’s.”
“They seem to have a fantastic home record despite their defeat last week but a very poor away record which suggests they don’t have the balance quite right for both occasions”
“Ultimately good player’s win football matches and they cost alot of money, if you have lots to spend then you buy some good player’s and win some game’s and Bellamy and Robinho have won them enough games so they are comfortable in the league, they have no threat of relegation and with a good run could probably finish 7th and that would be OK”

Team news; We will have to monitor Swp’s fitness as the prodigal son has missed the last 2 games with an ankle injury, Benjani and Bellamy won’t make it but Dunne is available as suspension only applies to europe and De Jong and Bojinov are both back after being ineligible for thursday, also Michael Johnson could make the squad after his long lay off.

W.B.A; Shelton Marti’s looks likely to miss out with a groin strain and Bednar is doubtful after a hamstring problem, 17 year old striker Chris Wood is set for a place on the bench.

Key men; Robinho is due a real breath-taking performance after playing well on thursday and think he’ll be back to his sublime best for this.
Bojinov, getting fitter as each week passes and will be keen to show what he can do after 2 years of injury setbacks.

Prediction; City 3-1 W.B.A

COME ON CITY, COME ON CITY, COME ON CITY.

 

Thanks to rick1894citizen of ManCityFans.Net for writing this preview.


Comments are closed.