City 0 Valencia 1
CITY failed their Spanish inquisition but as far as
Sven-Goran Eriksson is concerned, their pre-season ended on a positive note.A
10th minute goal from Silva, courtesy of mistakes from Gelson Fernandes and
Kasper Schmeichel, was enough to see the Thomas Cook Trophy winging its way back
to the Costa del Azahar.The Blues did hit the bar twice but were never able to
dominate the Champions League hopefuls who left their superstar David Villa on
the bench.Even so Eriksson was far from downcast."We matched Valencia, one of
the best teams in Europe. I thought we played as well as they did and created
more chances than them," he observed though the pace of the game was hardly that
of a full-blooded encounter."We had five new players out there, two of them have
not played for us at all in pre-season and don't speak English, so if you take
that into consideration then it was good."
-MEN match report.
I was away cricketing at the weekend so wasn't at the game but from media reports and (probably more accurately) first-hand reports from people I know who went it suggested that it was very much as expected with it being a bit hit and miss with the side having barely played together at all, so the overall result is far less important than the fact the players had (albeit brief) time to gel.
A shame we haven't got another pre-season coming up this midweek to give futher opportunity prior to the opening day game at West Ham - perhaps one plus being that they are also a side who have picked up a fair amount of new players close to the start of the season.
Looking round on YouTube, it seems DPercussion wasn't the only succesful event held in the city last Saturday:
4 comments:
Well, DPercussion probably had better broadcasting facilities, but we all got the message.
The Blues are here to stay,
That's what the people say,
We are the best football team,
The world has ever seen.
We're from the Kippax Street,
And we admire defeat,
When it comes from the boys who play in blue and white...
We've got foreign players. True. And if the foreign to home grown ratio who make it holds true, then I would expect the core of our team to be the lads we ended the season with - with the 'foreigners' doing the jobs that the Goat, Benarbia, van Buyten - and SWP were doing. It really doesn't need to be the competition that the newspapers are trying to make it into. We need competition for all the positions (never thought I'd be able to say that) but Sven's got less than two weeks to put it together. West Ham have a patched up team too, and Derby will either hit the ground running or be totally shell-shocked.
So we've got two practice matches before the action starts.
I was there on Saturday and I was very encouraged.
I thought FERNANDES was the pick of the bunch first half - pity about the goal though cos he gave the ball away.
IRELAND looked a lot stronger than last year and JOHNSON was excellent.
The SPANISH FULL BACK had a good second half once he'd settled down and so did PETROV who whips in a wicked ball when he gets the chance.
GIOVANNI has a toch of magic - shoots from anywhere. The OTHER BRAZILIAN was quiet but probably jetlagged.
Cant wait for the Derby County game
VIVA LA SVEN
I want to know when the Swedish bikini team is going to show at COMS as our cheerleaders.
Distract the opposition...
ir reckon city will be europe contenders next season with all these new players that we have got shame there are no british
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