Venue: City of Manchester Stadium
Date: Saturday, 5 December 2009
Kick-off: 1730
A trip to Manchester’s second side for us this evening and a chance to get the disappointment of our mid-week exit from the Carling Cup out of our systems.
Citeh come into the game on a high, having set up a Carling Cup semi-final tie against United courtesy of a 3-0 win over Arsenal mid-week and with a pretty unimpressive seven straight draws in the league, they’ll no doubt be pushing for the points today. Our league form, on the other hand, has seen us beat our other ‘big four’ rivals, with our last league game also seeing us hand Arsenal a 3-0 defeat.
MANAGERS’ VIEWS
Going into this game, Mark Hughes has been full of praise for his opponents, claiming “If they continue to play in the same vein as they are doing then they are absolutely (the favourites for the title). They’ve been the stand-out team up to this point. Defensively, physically and in an attacking sense, they have ticked every box. They look the real deal this season. I think they are close to being the best in Europe. That’s the size of our challenge. It’s been shown this year that you can come unstuck very quickly against them and find yourself behind in a game you haven’t really given yourself a chance to win. We don’t anticipate that happening, we will run them close, but our best might not be good enough because they’re playing as well as I’ve ever seen them play. We need to keep at that level we showed against Arsenal now, we don’t want to drop. If we get our noses in front (against Chelsea), let’s see what happens.”
Going into this game off the back of our mid-week disappointment, Carlo Ancelotti says “Every defeat normally is not good, but the priority of that game was to give minutes to the players that didn’t play against Arsenal and to give experience to young players. Our priority was that, and also a chance to give recovery to the other players. The League Cup was not so important, if we thought it was more important I would put in a different line-up. We are not disappointed, we showed good spirit, playing 60 minutes with 10 against 11, and drew in the last minute. This means we have a very good spirit, and this is important. We kept a lot of players in the training ground and they trained well, so we have a fresh team. If we continue to play like against Arsenal we have a very good possibility to arrive in first place but we have to pay attention because every game is difficult to play. There are a lot of teams in England with very good quality.” And turning his attention back to matters in hand, says “We have to play against a dangerous team, because Manchester City has a lot of players with very good technical quality, top players. They didn’t win the last seven games and they want to win against Chelsea because we are top of the list. They will have very good motivation to play against us and we have to pay attention to this.”
SQUAD NEWS
Bellamy, Ireland and Petrov (all knee) are all apparently doubtful, Weiss (tonsillitis) misses out and Shaun Wright-Phillips faces a late fitness test after a knock against Arsenal.
For Chelsea, Salomon Kalou (thigh) joins Bosingwa and Alex (hip) on the missing list.
TEAMS
MAN CITY: (from): Given, Taylor, Richards, Zabaleta, Toure, Lescott, Onuoha, Bridge, Garrido, Wright-Phillips, De Jong, Kompany, Johnson, Ireland, Barry, Robinho, Bellamy, Petrov, Adebayor, Tevez, Santa Cruz, Benjani
CHELSEA: (from): Cech, Hilario, Turnbull, Ivanovic, A Cole, Zhirkov, Carvalho, Terry, Essien, Lampard, Belletti, Mikel, Ballack, Malouda, Kakuta, Deco, J Cole, Anelka, Drogba
LAST MEETING
Chelsea 1-0 Man City (15 March 2009)
PREDICTION
There’s worse sides we could face following our mid-week defeat, particularly if you look at our record against today’s opponents: 10 wins from our last 12 trips there (8 straight) and 12 clean sheets in our last 14 league meetings. City also seem to be struggling for wins of late, with seven straight draws, although having said that, they have only lost once in 17 games in all competitions this season, so they won’t necessarily be an easy side to beat. And whilst the fact that we’ve scored 17 goals without reply in our last five games in the league is pretty impressive, our vulnerability could still be around set-pieces. Draw looking likely?
REFEREE
Howard Webb
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