Manchester City 
vs Dinamo Kyiv 
Thursday 17th March 2011
Europa League – Round of 16
Tired legs but exciting times for tea-time football
So here we are, for the first time in my and many others’ City lives. We enter the back end of the month of March and Manchester City sit third in England’s top division, in the semi finals of the FA Cup and with a tough, but still feasibly do-able, task ahead to progress into the Quarter Finals of the Europa League.
Some crazy scheduling of this tie against Dinamo has already seen City’s snood clad first team take to the field in Ukraine’s permafrost at 10pm and this Manchester leg is timed by those boffins at UEFA at the quite potty time of 6pm?!
The club, to their credit, are doing everything they can to ensure that as big a turn-out as can be is achieved so that as many blues as possible are crammed into Eastlands getting behind Mancini’s men and hopefully replicating last week’s FA quarter final atmosphere in the soon-to-be-renamed City of Manchester Stadium.
City it has to be said face a very tough task tomorrow night, perhaps their stiffest questioning of the season so far. There are no second chances and, although it’s not an insurmountable mountain to climb, tomorrow needs City to take the game to Kiev whilst not losing discipline and allowing Kiev to claim what would likely be a terminally fatal away goal.
The leg in Kiev saw City fall behind to (predictably enough seeing as he’d been an abject failure against most other English opposition in his time at Chelsea) an Andriy Shevchenko strike as he stole in at Hart’s near post to take Dinamo 1-0 up just under the half hour mark.
City, who were pretty much below par all evening, were lucky that the referee chose not to punish them for a potential offence in the box by Vince The Prince as shouts went up for the referee to blow up for Kompany having potentially impeded Roman Eremenko who collapsed as if shot from Row Z.
Half time saw the bizarre non-emergence of the swollen faced Mario Balotelli whose very surreal Manchester City career so far took another rather odd turn which saw him ultimately withdrawn for the introduction of captain Carlos Tevez.
The attacking re-jig was to no avail, however, as a continuingly lacklustre City were again punished by the Ukranians with just over 10 minutes of normal time remaining. A ball hit into the box was uncharacteristically poorly dealt with by Kompany and Gusev pounced before Micah Richards could rescue his defensive colleague and the ball was drilled past Hart to claim the 2-0 lead which Dinamo take to Manchester.
Injuries, suspensions and allergies
FC Dinamo Kyiv will be without striker Artem Milevskiy who broke his hand 43 minutes into Kyiv’s 2-0 win over FC Vorskla Poltava. Milevskiy wasn’t amongst the scorers in the Ukraine but his absence certainly weakens the opposition which can only be a positive for City.
Adam Johnson is still probably City’s key injury absentee with his return now encouragingly looking likely as we move towards the end of March and Kolo Toure remains ineligible as he awaits the progress of his case for an alleged dopey, sorry….”doping” offence.
Let us all hope also that the MCFC groundsmen have been sprinkling crushed up Claritin allergy tablets over our hallowed turf so that perhaps Super Mario can make it through the match without coming over all funny again.
Hopefully, however, the biggest difference between the Manchester City that froze in Kyiv and the one to take the field on Thursday will be the Europa League return of Manchester City’s snarling Nigel de Jong who was so impressive in the FA Cup. This, combined, with the return to top form of David Silva and availability of Tevez, Yaya Toure, Dzeko and a settled defence (containing the particularly in-form Richards, Kompany and Lescott) should be enough cause for sky blue optimism.
The teams
If there has been a continued theme of criticism towards Mancini this season from the blue acolytes it has been the lack of adventure and courage in tough ties; the conservative approaches taken against United (at home) and Arsenal (away) drawing particular vitriol from City fans and media alike.
Whilst not exactly enjoying the “festival of football” on show from City in either of those matches it could certainly be argued that a policy of safety first which led to the harvesting of a valuable point did have its merits in a long, arduous league campaign.
Thursday, however, City have no European second chances this season. It is win or bust and, accordingly, it will be fascinating to see what kind of City Mancini sends out and under what orders his team will be marshaled.
The away leg saw a makeshift (and what, under different circumstances, could have been a very attacking) line-up take the field. Unfortunately it had one major defect in that it featured a midfield three of Gareth Barry, Yaya Toure and Aleks Kolarov. The combination of Barry’s immobility, Toure being asked to stifle what he does best (ie. rampaging through the middle) and Kolarov, well, not being a midfielder likely contributed to City’s undoing on that cold night in Kyiv.
Kiev’s similar 4-3-3 formation didn’t totally outplay City by any means but they did enough and saw the blues concede two pretty poor goals from a Mancunian perspective.
With the exception of the injured Artem Milevskiy who will be missed, it would be reasonable to expect more of the same from Kyiv although perhaps with them replacing the broken handed forward with some midfield bolster to protect their lead.
A stiffly encamped will provide City with the type of hurdle they have been notoriously poor in overcoming this season and it will be interesting, if Kyiv do indeed park a bus, to see how City go about their task.
In terms of formation I think most blues would be expecting to see City to line-up in either a 4-3-3 or perhaps the slightly more secure 4-1-4-1 with Nigel de Jong specifically protecting the back four and City’s front 5 being quite a fluid set-up.
Team selection is mostly certain for the back 5 (Hart, Richards, Kompany, Lescott, Zabalata/Kolarov).
Then the front six likely to be De Jong, Yaya Toure, Barry, Silva, Tevez, Balotelli with the options of throwing on the likes of Dzeko and SWP if different options are needed to break any kind of deadlock. City should have enough to get this job done and an early goal could make the crucial difference (…either way!).
All in all, it’s a massive match, wish I could be there to get behind the lads but sure that every one of you that can and is there in person will do us proud. Come on City!
A massive thanks to www.mancityfans.net poster Ant London for this fantastic match preview