This weekend sees City visit the Emirates hoping for a repeat of last year’s amazing win. The most likely outcome for the game is an Arsenal victory, but with the Gunners losing their captain Cesc Fabregas during last night’s disappointing draw with Burnley and Arsene Wenger already getting his excuses in early (see here), might there be a glimmer of hope for the travelling contingent of City fans?
No. Frankly. Arsenal have been playing poorly of late but have still been picking up points. Wenger’s half time tantrum inspired his side to come back from behind away to Liverpool, with Andrei Arshavin’s explosive strike bagging the points, and by all accounts Arsenal were lucky to even claim a point against Burnley. The Clarets were denied all three points by both the woodwork, which repelled Chris Eagles’s fantastic solo strike, and the linesman who deemed, rightly in my opinion, that Steven Fletcher was offside when tapping in from close range. On another day Burnley might also have been awarded a second penalty for a Mikael Silvestre handball, and with Graham Alexander possessing lethal ability from 12 yards, it’s safe to assume that he would’ve picked up his second goal of the game. All of this might offer hope to City fans, but this ignores City’s form in their last two games. Away to Aston Villa, City were pedestrian at best. Even before Jimmy Bullard’s “I can fly, oh no wait… that’s the ground and I’ve just done my knee again” moment, Villa were putting the pressure on City and in truth should’ve scored sooner than they did, with Luke Young going close in the very first minute of the game and Emile Heskey fluffing a glorious chance as only he can. Villa’s goals, when they did come, all resulted from mistakes made by City. Richard Dunne’s opener saw not one, not two, not three, but four! FOUR! City players make howlers to leave him unmarked in the area. Kamil Zayatte, Andy Dawson, George Boateng and Jozy Altidore all equally culpable, leaving the massive faced Irishman with acres of space and he duly obliged by lashing the ball into the top corner, carrying on his impressive run of form since his transfer from Abu Dhabi Citeh. The second we all know about, Matt Duke running needlessly from his goal, Steve Sidwell’s quick thinking and an impressive finish from West Yorkshire oik James Milner. The third, a John Carew penalty, saw Duke needlessly, in my eyes, pull down Ashley Young and Carew smacked in Villa’s third, with Villa Park finally waking up from its seemingly permanent stupor to remind us that Carew “is bigger than me and you.” He is. But not if you and I were added together to form some kind of super person. Individually, yes. Collectively, no.
And so on to the KC and Blackburn. What can you write about this game? Not much because not much happened. Craig Fagan missed a great chance as Craig Fagan is prone to doing, through one on one with only Robinson to beat he missed. We knew he would so to find ourselves still level after crafting a brilliant opportunity was no surprise. Blackburn hoofed, we hoofed back. Vennegoor of Hesselink flashed a header wide, Jozy Altidore tripped himself up but City weren’t lucky enough to get a third dodgy penalty in a matter of weeks. Blackburn’s introduction of Klasnic might’ve turned the game in their favour but he spurned a number of great opportunities to win the game for Big Sam’s dullards and, in the end, neither team went home happy.
So what from all this leads me to think that City won’t repeat last year’s heroics or even claim a point at the Emirates? Just the fact that Arsenal have been on a poor run and yet are still picking up points. Generally (Liverpool aside), the top clubs do not go on extended runs of poor form. With City regressing back to their October ways rather than their blinding form of November, a win beckons for the Gunners. To add to that City haven’t exactly been pulling up trees away from the KC this season (or indeed, at the KC), claiming only two points, scoring 5 and conceding 21. Doesn’t exactly say “grinding out the points” does it? Meanwhile, Arsenal have only lost once at home to the west London powerhouses of Chelsea, and have conceded a respectable 7 goals in 7 home league games, scoring 22 of their own. That’s not to say I’m totally downbeat about our chances. You never know with football do you? If it was a dead cert that Arsenal would win then you wouldn’t bother going. I had exactly the same thoughts last season prior to City visiting the Emirates, Anfield and Stamford Bridge and I was proved wrong.
The weekend’s other fixtures of note to us see Blackburn take on Spurs at Ewood Park and that should be an away win, given Tottenham’s dismissal of Manchester City last night. Portsmouth play Liverpool in Saturday’s lunch time kick off. Liverpool scraped a win against Wigan last night to lift themselves back into the top Six and maybe that might see them turn a corner. At any rate, I can’t see them dropping points to Portsmouth. Sunday sees a couple of really big clashes with West Ham facing Chelsea and Wolves welcoming Burnley to Molineux. West Ham vs Chelsea is an easy one I think. I’ve seen one pundit predict that West Ham might stifle the Blues but this isn’t going to happen. The Hammers were well beaten by Bolton and with Chelsea swatting Pompey aside I can only see Chelsea winning. Burnley’s visit to Wolves is a little more interesting and is a definite six pointer. Burnley haven’t travelled well this season, whilst Wolves have claimed half of the 16 points at home. Wolves have scored 7 at home all season, with Burnley’s away tally equaling this, whilst Burnley’s defence away from home has been slightly meaner than Wolves’s at home. A dull and unsatisfactory draw for both sides then? Yup.
Whilst I’m here, I’d like to write a bit about Hull’s failed bid to be considered as a host city for England’s 2018 World Cup Bid. I could take this if I felt like some of the cities who won out ahead of Hull merited their places. But Plymouth? Really? How is financially viable for Plymouth Argyle, those perpetual Championship strugglers to have a nice shiny new 30,000 + seater stadium? Their average attendance this season has been 10,726. Laughable. So that’s a huge new stadium for the Green Army to rattle about in? Right, that’s fiscally prudent, isn’t it? Another reason for Hull’s non inclusion is that the organizers wanted a better geographical spread of host cities for more of the country to experience the World Cup. So London get three grounds, Manchester gets two, Liverpool (a short drive down the road from Manchester remember) gets one, and Newcastle and Sunderland get one each. Alright, so I’m hardly likely to be the most unbiased of people in this case but Plymouth and Milton Keynes have hardly proved themselves to be hotbeds of football have they? Milton Keynes average attendance is just as poor as Plymouth’s, with 10,325 actually rattling around an already built stadium. It’s already proved to be an example of money poorly spent. OK, they couldn’t carry on playing at the Hockey Stadium but shouldn’t somebody have pulled Pete Winkleman back from the realms of fantasy to remind him that nobody goes to watch MK Mongs and a team in League One does not justify having a newly built 35,000 seater stadium? Mind you, someone might’ve said something similar to Adam Pearson before the KC was built and now look at it. Full every week, but still very quiet. I’ll shut up now. I’m ranting.
See you after the weekend.
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