Manchester City v Sheffield Wednesday
Sunday 4th January 2015
FA Cup sponsored by no-one
Prize Money: £67,500
Hello again, it’s been a long time. My new year’s resolution has been to try and complete more previews between now and the end of the season. To be honest it’s a lot harder to write them under Pellegrini as he tends to get a lot more right than wrong when, compared to the last season under Mancini, it felt like a weekly plea to pick the correct team to give us a chance at victory. No, in fact it’s a lot harder when City are doing well to put together a preview but the two Christmas home games have produced enough to talk about.
Burnley (H)
A funny first half as we did little with any tempo but found ourselves in front thanks to Merlin’s pass into the goal and an astonishing second goal. Second half however, was a disappointing display as I think I’ve seen in the Pellegrini-era and even know I’m struggling to think of a simple redeeming thing about it the second half.
The blame sits with Manuel Pellegrini for me, he let slip that Toure had a calf injury when the official party line was he was being rested, but he got key substitutions wrong. Milner should have completed the 90, yes you might need Jovetic to get minutes for fitness but at 2-1 drop Milner into the midfield to protect the defence. How Fernando lasted 90 minutes is astounding, once he gets booked he becomes the living statue and Burnley by-passed him as such. Lampard should have come on much earlier than he did as he rarely gives the ball away and was Scott Sinclair really an upgrade to Nasri?
Possibly.
In addition, a mention must go to the centre backs who got pulled all over the place by Burnley’s front two with Martin Demechelis having a rare off game. Mangala though was woeful second half, how often do you see the centre back concede a free kick for jumping on the back of the forward, almost never, yet Mangala conceded about three at the death and was in no man’s land for the equaliser. At the time though we did have the conversation as to when would Mangala have had practised defending the long ball in the manner that Burnley played? At the lowest levels of English football sides must pick their centre halves based purely on height and heading ability and its engrained in English players from the youngest age. However, I can’t imagine he’s had to face much long ball launched from deep at Standard Liege and Porto, City need to work on him with that, as worst of all he just could not judge his timing on his jump and it just looked amateur. It’s a huge flaw for a £30m+ defender.
Credit to Burnley though, as although they stole 15 yards on the free kick for their second goal (and we as a team should be protesting that) they had us on the ropes and having just watched their 3-3 draw at Newcastle I thought it was a shame that they decided to play the last 5 minutes in the corner when they could have gone on to win it. 2 more points dropped at home so it was a real missed opportunity to overtake Chelsea.
Random Thought: Having seen Burnley gain consecutive draws away and watch Leicester dominate the Red Scouse on their travels are Championship sides, who play 8 more games throughout the league season, better equipped for the Christmas period?
Sunderland (H)
Speaking of teams holding on for a point. Have you ever seen such as an expensively and eclectically assembled side as Sunderland be so un-ambitious? That first half wasn’t great from City, but when you play a side that doesn’t even get men ahead of the ball when they’re in possession what are you supposed to do? They obviously had a game plan but I thought Jovetic and Silva played in the same space making it even harder to break them down. Silva wants to play off Jovetic into the space not share it.
The second half was more of the same until we scored. That goal from Yaya Toure was superb, “obviously 68 miles per hour” said Robbie Savage on the pace it was struck. It showed great patience from City and sometimes beating sides with no intention of winning the game are the most satisfying. Jovetic’s second was nice, it was a great finish, a real glimpse of how good a player he can be and I always love it when Clichy contributes to a goal. Overall though I didn’t think Jovetic was great and if anything I think it’s just a case of trying too hard.
The goals seemed to wake Sunderland up and we’ve always had a penchant for self-destruction from corners. Why have we stopped putting a man on the post? Well we all knew the script, Rodwell scored, he was anonymous for the other 90+ minutes of the game as was Johnson who scored the penalty. It was in the stars, only saving grace was Connor Wickham and Jordi Gomez not pulled out past heroics against us again.
To be fair to City, from 2-2 they scored immediately, you can’t blame Lampard for staying as if we continue to make such number of chances he’ll over take Shearer, and then created so many chances if it had finished 8-2 Sunderland would still have felt like they’d got away with it. Lampard could have had three, Milner should have had three and Navas had two great chances.
One thing I really liked about Pellegrini’s subs this time was Kolarov coming on and playing ahead of Clichy at the death, as one of the things we really lack is the balance of a left footed winger and I’d be interested in experimenting with the two on the left on occasion. (Is this planning for Bale to play in that role?)
One mention of the referee, Roger East, at 80 minutes I opened up the City match day app to check the foul count, we were losing 14-3 on 65% possession. Three measly fouls given in the first 80 minutes was beyond a joke and has been part of a consistent theme of referee’s bringing City down to the level of everyone else.
Man of the match for me was a split between Navas and Clichy for me. Navas was excellent, his crossing was superb, he had a couple of chances and really played above himself. Clichy had a hand in the first goal and created both the second and third goal. Clichy has been in some excellent form recently but often goes unnoticed in an era when we expect our full backs to bomb down the wings and score lots of goals. Special mention to Mangala again as I thought he was excellent with the ball at his feet, passing the ball and putting in some tackles when under pressure and showed some great timing, at one stage he played across the entire back four single handedly.
Overall, it has been a decent Christmas period and to move level with Chelsea on alphabetical order is as much as we could have hoped for several weeks ago. It’s made even more impressive considering we are apparently a one man team and Kun Aguero has missed the entire Christmas period. Add in the captain’s absence and having played three games without a centre forward if we can try and get everyone fit it will give us a fighting chance in what is a massive month for City with Everton, Arsenal and Chelsea to play in consecutive games.
The FA Cup
Ah yes, dust off the pink balls, John Motson and the book of footballing clichés “the worlds most famous cup competition” is back for yet another addition of giving the biggest clubs a televised payday to allow the second tier sports presenters to rub shoulders with Wenger, Rodgers and Van Gaal etc. Yes, as 2011 winners and 2012 runners up I should have a bigger respect but the draw has hardly been the most spectacular. No disrespect to Sheffield Wednesday as if we were travelling to Hillsborough I’d be much more up for the game but I was really hoping for a side that we’d not faced recently or a ground we’d never been to. Interestingly, this is our 7th home game in a row in the FA Cup!
What do we know about Sheff Wed? We’ve faced them this season in the League Cup when we won 7-0 with all seven goals coming in the second half. Impressively Wednesday brought 5,500 fans with them and probably will do again. In the league they are 10th, having won 8 drawn 10 and only lost 6 of their 24 games but have only scored 18 league goals all season.
Stuart Gray is the head coach and they’ve got themselves a couple of ex-City players in Kieran Westwood and Jeremy Helan. They’ve also got the once highly tipped Joe Mattock, Giles Coke and Kamil Zayatte. Stevie May is their top scorer with 5 goals and is the type of centre back likely to give us some trouble. It’s a shame that Lewis McGugan and Royston Drenthe’s loans have ended.
As for City well I’ve struggled to find any previews that suggest who might play on Sunday with the exception of Wily Caballero. It’s a difficult discussion with regards to selection with us only having had a game on Thursday I suspect a lot will depend on the time the players have to recover to determine who will be selected. I suspect that Frank Lampard, Dedryck Boyata, Jose Pozo and James Milner will all be handed starts as none started on Thursday. We do know that Dzeko, Kompany and Aguero will be unavailable.
Prediction
Should be a straight forward win but there is no such thing in the Christmas period and we should ensure that we don’t succumb to a cup upset. As much as I’ve moaned about the sheer volume of trips we’ve had to Wembley in the last three years there is nothing better than a London to win some silverware.
2-0 City
‘Interesting’ Fact Sheffield Wednesday v Manchester City was the last ever top flight fixture not to be recorded on television in any form.