Arguably this should be the sternest test for City, but I suspect that both teams will have the post CL game hangover. This is about who recovers best and who wants to win more than the other.
The top of the table looks quite odd at the moment, with the expected top 4 not being quite where they where expected to be, but it’s early days yet. It is good to see other teams in the mix, particularly pleased for Southampton, but let’s see whose where at Christmas, that’s more of a barometer.
I would hope that Pellegrini wants to win at Chelsea and decides to play a strong team today, which may involve a good deal of changes from Wednesday night. I suspect both Kolorov and Richards will slot back into the full back roles, and I would also expect a start for Nastasic. This leaves the problem of who to partner at CB and with Pellegrini not liking two left footers together, I’m expecting either Garcia to keep his place or Martin Demichaelis to get a sniff of the first team. We could of course see Lescott at left CB but the partner CB still applies.
I expect Samir Nasri to get a start today in place of Navas, who still seems to be adjusting to life at City, let’s hope he’s not home sick and starts to take on full backs and murdering them soon. I think Yaya Toure is a certain starter, and as long as his head is in the right place after the awful racist abuse in Moscow he should continue in Central Midfield. With David Silva being back to his best form he just must play for me, so that leaves who partners YT in the centre. I’m not sure that Rodwell is sufficiently fit (or trusted) to play in this type of high profile game, but I’d be tempted to consider James Milner alongside YT, but Fernandinho is starting to look better and he may well retain his place.
I think at some stage we will see Stefan Jovetic get a start for City, but we do have strikers who are playing pretty well at this moment in time, with Aguero banging the goals in in recent matches, and he is a certain starter for me today. Based upon form it should be Negredo who starts alongside Aguero as he is playing well, scoring goals and looking like he is forging a good partnership with Aguero up front. The manager may decide that he needs to shuffle the pack and give Džeko a start, or we may see another bout of cbaness if he doesn’t. He had a couple of half chances on Moscow but didn’t seem to want to bust a gut to score. Maybe that’s harsh. I’d start with Aguero and Negredo today.
I do think today is about not losing as much as winning but we do seem to have a good record against Chelsea of late and their home form hasn’t been the best recently. They will be looking to do the minimum to win, like us, after the CL. It could prove to be a classic and with so many good players on show you’d sorta think it should be.
There have been signs that the team is developing it’s approach under Pellegrini and that his philosophy is starting to get through. The newer players are gelling into the team and we are starting to become more of the force that we should be. I’m not sure what plan B looks like yet, but plan A will work most of the time then that’s fine with me. I think the Pellegrini way is as much about players as formations and systems, as good players, in my view, play well whatever and our top top top top players are now getting back to fitness and form and that should hopefully mean a good run of decent results.
We have won the first two of the four away games and I’d like to think we can do the same again today and notch a win away at Chelsea. I think this is eminently doable.
C’mon City.
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