The Soccer Blog: Arsenal - Manchester City Preview

Tuesday 4 January 2011

Arsenal - Manchester City Preview

Arsenal – Manchester City Preview - The Offside - Arsenal blog

« January Transfer Window Preview | Home | Arsenal – Manchester City PreviewBy: Martin | January 4th, 2011
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Manchester City

Position: 2nd, 12-5-4 (41 points, +17 goal differential)

Away Form: 6-2-2 (+10 goal differential)

Recent Form: WLWWW

Last Meeting: Manchester City 0 – Arsenal 3 (October 24, 2010)

Arsenal back in league action tomorrow with a titanic clash that is shaping up to be one of the most important matches of the season for both teams.

It’s pretty clear what this match means to us. If we win, we leapfrog them into 2nd place, retain a match in hand on them, and try to keep United in our sights. It keeps our good momentum going into a sort of weird mini-break, since this is our last league match for 10 days (we have the FA Cup match on Saturday and the Carling Cup semi-final first leg next week). A loss, coupled with a Manchester United win at home against Stoke, would put us 5 points behind, with Manchester United still having a game in hand against Blackpool. Assuming they win that, could we really make up 8 points on them over 17 matches? Stranger things have happened, of course, but I’d just as soon not find out. I think if we want to win the league our strategy has to be stay within arm’s reach of United and hope to beat them at the Emirates later on to basically pull even with them.

For Manchester City, this seems to be the season when things are finally starting to come together. After a couple of years of big-spending, many of them foolish (honestly, looking at their expenditures over the last couple of years, there are a couple of real head-slappers — £17.5 million for Roque Santa Cruz? £26 million for James Milner? £25 million for Adebayor? £24 million for Jolean Lescott? £18 million for Jo? £16 million for Kolo Touré?), they have finally assembled a collection of good players who have gotten accustomed to playing, and playing well, together.

They are bound and determined to break into the Big 4 (although, honestly, with Tottenham finishing 4th last season and Liverpool’s struggle, the days of the static “Big 4” seem to be at an end), and have played themselves into the title race. With their recent good form and Chelsea’s struggles, it was hard not to think that there had been a passing of the torch. The torch which had “big money, no class, no history team full of d-bags that only horrible people and Johnny-come-lately fans could ever root for” engraved along the side of it. But Man City is here to stay, and it would be hard to see them not winning trophies over the next 2-3 years.

This game is probably just as vital to their title aspirations as it is to ours, though. While they’re even on points with United, United have 2 games in hand on them. If they lose and United win tomorrow, United will suddenly be 3 points clear with 2 games in hand, and City will have to make up that ground in just 16 remaining fixtures, which will be very difficult indeed.

It’s stating the obvious, but Manchester City are a good team. And the strength of their team is their defense, which, with just 15 goals conceded in 21 matches, is the best unit in the Premiership. Joe Hart is a very good keeper, and they’ve got a number of good options along the back. £16 million summer signing Alexander Kolarov will start on the left, £10 million summer signing Daniel Jerome Boateng will almost certainly start on the right, and they have a couple of options at center back. For me, for all the money they’ve spent on center backs, Vincent Kompany is by far the most effective defender they have, so I have to think he’ll get the start. Beside him will be one of Joleon Lescott, Kolo Toure, or Micah Richards, all decent defenders in their own right.

Of course, not to take anything away from their defender and keepers, but the primary reason they have conceded so few goals is not their defenders, but their holding midfielders. Specifically that City essentially play 3 of them (although they really deploy Yaya Toure as more of a box to box guy free to roam forward with the attack). While their formation may actually be similar to ours, although Yaya is much more withdrawn than Cesc is, they play in a completely different way, as our “holding” midfielders” are always looking to get forward, and theirs stay put. Anyway, they will play Yaya, and probably Nigel de Jong and Gareth Barry behind him, although James Milner sometimes plays in that role as well. As does Vieira, and I do hope he gets to come on just to get a good reaction from the crowd, but I can’t see him starting. Although I wouldn’t mind, because anyone who has seen him play lately knows how past it he really is.

In the attacking position, Adam Johnson is virtually certain to get a start. The former Middlesbrough winger is one of the bright young stars in the English game, and has performed very well for them. We will need to keep an eye on him. Tevez will almost certainly get the start up top. And as for the other position, well, that will be interesting. Ordinarily it would be summer signing David Silva, who has been fantastic for City this year, but he is out with an injury for this one. As is Mario Balotelli, who has been playing a fair amount for City lately. My inclination is to say that they may start Milner out wide, but it could be any of the following: Shaun Wright-Phillips, Roque Santa Cruz, Jo, Pablo Zabaleta, or even the dreaded Adebayor. You may have heard that City have signed Edin Dzeko (the “Bosnian Bendtner”), but I don’t think he has agreed terms with them, so he will certainly not feature tomorrow.

Speaking of Adepaymore, our old-boys Adebayor and Kolo Toure got in a fist-fight at the Manchester City training ground today. Toure was never anything other than a class act in his time with Arsenal, and Adebayor was anything but. I know whose side I’m on. Vieira was one of the players who broke it up. So there’s an unusual number of former Arsenal players lining up against us on this one. I expect the crowd will give 2 of the 3 very warm welcomes if given the opportunity, but the other one, not so much. But it is kind of amazing that City have done as well as they have given their awful team chemistry. I’m sure I mentioned this before, but when I saw Manchester City in their preseason US tour when they played in NYC, I could not believe how much they were shouting and glaring at each other. In preseason. It was so, so clear that they did not get along, I thought they were on pace for a catastrophic season, but they’ve managed to more or less hold it together this year so far.

In team news for us, there is no news. Which is great news. I’m not going to jinx it by going into it in any greater detail, but we have the same team available which we have had for the past couple of matches. Here is my best guess at a lineup:

Flaps

Sagna-Koscielny-Djourou-Clichy

Wilshere-Song

Walcott-Cesc-Nasri

van Persie

Bench: Wojo, Squillaci, Eboue, Denilson, Rosicky, Chamakh, Arshavin

Yeah, I’m picking the same team that played against Chelsea and Birmingham. It’s probably wrong and there will probably be some minor rotation, but the guys have had 3 days of rest since the last match, and Wenger will almost certainly rotate the squad for Saturday’s FA Cup match, so why not stick with the best players, who are on fire at the moment? And who deserves to be bumped? I won’t go into much more detail than that, as I think everyone I put in the starting lineup’s play over the last few weeks speaks for itself.

The first match-up between the teams was one of the highlights of the season. We beat them at their own stadium 3-0. It could have been 4 or 5. But they were down to 10 men for almost the entirety of the match, so it’s hard to say how much of a reflection that is on them. They’ll certainly be looking for revenge. We’ve been pretty good against them at the Emirates the past few years, but the past few years they’ve been a pretty woeful away team, and this year they may be the best away team in the Prem (they’ve got 1 less away point than us, but they’ve had 1 less away match, and they have the best away goal differential in the league). So it will be a struggle.

They will certainly be looking to jam up midfield and try to hit us with some quick-strike counterattacks, and they have guys with the speed and skill to pull that off. They also have enough big strong aerial guys and deadball specialists to be dangerous from set-pieces, so we’ll want to watch that.

This really could be a season-defining match. After this, our next league fixtures are: away to West Ham (currently 16th in the table), Wigan at home (17th ), Everton at home (13th), away to Newcastle (10th), Wolves at home (20th), and Stoke at home (8th). I certainly don’t want to get arrogant, and we’ve seen that Arsenal capable of dropping points to anyone, any where, any time, but those are a pretty forgiving fixture list. 4 of the 6 at home, no team higher than 8th in the table, all very winnable. If we could beat City, and take care of business in most if not all of those matches, it is certainly very conceivable that we could be neck-and-neck with Manchester United by the end of February.

This is a big one. 3 points would be huge. Let’s get out there and do it.

Come on Arsenal.

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Category: Arsenal News, Fixtures, Manchester City, Premiership, Preview

Tags: Arsenal News, Fixtures, Manchester City, Premiership, Preview
Tweet « January Transfer Window Preview | Home | bapdumi think its jerome boateng?
thanks for the reviewMaríaWho is Daniel Boateng? Don't you mean Jerome Boateng? ;)MartinYep, sorry. Daniel Boateng is an Arsenal youth player, for some reason that was in my head when I typed that. Will fix now -- good catch.MartinOh, too late. I think you should get tarred and feathered as a City fan for this little outburst. I think I got my reputation as a Spurs fan for far, far less.SairaxOh no...it's coming isn't it.....MartinDon't worry -- you'll be too busy singing "Blue Moon" to notice...SairaxI hate you.MartinThis was supposed to be in response to Sairax, but ended up here b/c Disqus is the crappiest crap that ever crapped. God knows where this will end up.MartinAlso, just wanted to point out that "Theo van Nasregas" really seems to be taking the internet by storm. The origin of these things always seems to get lost in the storm, but I'm virtually certain that it was originally coined by none other than our very own Sairax.MartinAlso forgot to mention the following:

(1) The FA handed Lee Bowyer a 3-match ban for stamp on Sagna. For as much as we (deservedly) criticize the FA for making a joke of things, we should give them praise when they get something right. And they got this right.

(2) Wenger basically said Vela will go out on loan to whoever can promise him the most playing time. Sounds like there may be more than one suitor, with Bolton being the most aggressive. I would think this would be wrapped up by the end of the week, though. It will be interesting to see if Wenger thinks playing time is important to develop Vela for his future at Arsenal, or to show off what he can do in the shop window so he can be sold in the summer.

(3) Kieran Gibbs back in training, and Wenger says he should be available on Saturday. I expect he'll start either in that game or the Carling Cup semi-final first leg against Ipswich. Let's hope he can stay healthy.

(4) Aaron Ramsey played 90 minutes for Nottingham Forest and finished up his loan spell. Now back at the club. I didn't watch any of it, but people who watched his final match said he looked very rusty, and looked very tentative in 50/50 balls. I suspect we won't see him in anything other than a domestic cup match for at least another month or so.Sairax5) Bergkamp made Ajax Youth Team managerSairaxSo Glad David Silva won't be playing. He's been great this season.

For some reason I don't really hate Man City. I'm sure I will when they win something, but I only really get mildly annoyed by them. Maybe it's because they also really hate Man Utd *shrug*MartinSee, I'm kind of the exact opposite. I feel like Manchester City are so dangerous and bad for the game because the way they have gone about building their team -- I'd hate for football to simply turn into "whose dad has the most money," which is what they represent. I said it before and I'll say it again, even thought I'm still taking grief for it -- but if I had to choose between Spurs winning or qualifying for something and City doing the same, that's no choice at all -- Spurs every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Spurs may be awful, but you can't really say they represent a threat to the financial health and sanity of the game, which is certainly how I feel about City.SairaxReading what I just wrote, I almost can't believe it. Who defends Wenger's fiscal prudence more than me? I don't understand myself...4rtneither do weSairaxI agree that getting that kind of money totally screws up the market. But at the same time, don't we all "buy" trophies? We pay our players a lot of money, plus we pay young players ridiculous amounts just so they stay with us. With regards to the transfer market, Man City money does create havoc though.

I dunno. Who would turn down that money anyway? Man City fans, the miserable bastards, finally have a chance to get one over on United, which kind of amuses me. I think Mancini is doing a good job too.

At the end of the day, I would not want our club to go down that route. I don't know why it doesn't bother me more....MartinI just think that with us (and, to a lesser degree, teams like Spurs, Liverpool, and Manchester United), there is a tradition and continuity that is the reason we have so much money in the first place, and that determines our spending. And we have to live within our means, or close to it. So yes, we buy success in that we pay a ton of money in wages, but we have that money because the fans give it to the club, based on past success. It's constained somehow.

I just feel like it cheapens and degrades the game if, for example, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerburg wake up one day and decide "You know what? I want to win the Champions League? And you know what? I want to do it with Huddersfield Town!" and just go buy a team and spend billions, having no concern for income or breaking even. And then when they get what they want, they can just drop the team and let it sink back to where they found it.

I know I'm being slightly overly dramatic (although I would say the difference between that example and what happened at Chelsea and what is happening at Manchester City is a difference of degree, not kind), but I feel like guys like Sheikh Mansour and others cheapen the sport by basically turning it into a dick-measuring contest for multibillionaires.SairaxI guess, in my defense, sometimes it takes a while before things sink in with me. Like if someone dies or something, it takes a while before it really hits me and I realize what's happened. So if Man City win the league this season maybe I'll have that "moment" or something lolMartinWell I certainly don't mean to be attacking you. I just Manchester City.

That having been said, when Adebayor is dancing around on the pitch with that trophy, it will be your fault for not hating them more.SairaxEither way, I would very much like to destroy them tomorrow.SairaxOh I know you weren't attacking me lol I think I was defending myself against...myself.

Oh dear god Adebayor. That just set off my gag reflex.SairaxYou see, I agree with all of that. So why don't I hate them more :sWhat004Flaps?? Dont be so ignorantDarren_VIt's a nickname. Deal with it.MartinDude, I'm 30 years old. I'm not going to get any less ignorant any time soon.blog comments powered by Disqus