[center]Stoke City v Manchester City
Britannia Stadium
Saturday 15th September 2012
3pm KO
Referee: Mark Clattenberg
Two sides forever linked by a cup final that ended our 35 year wait for a trophy
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Let’s get that out of the way…[/center]
In a darkened room in the month of June, deep inside the halls of the Football Association, a senior official sits down at his desk and reviews the fixtures that the computer has generated. The official notes down the opening months fixtures and sends them to Sky headquarters for approval. He sits at his desk and flicks through Red Issue as the computer processes the fixtures for September, stopping only briefly to laugh at the Bertie Magoo cartoon, when a warning light goes off. The man pours over the fixtures on the screen that has caused an alert. After the international window ‘Manchester United v Stoke City’ and ‘Wigan Athletic v Manchester City’.
‘No. No. No.’ he thinks to himself, ‘This won’t please Lord Ferg’. The FA official calmly swaps the opponents of Manchester’s only club with that of the one owned Tampa Bay’s finest gingers. ‘Much better for United’ he thinks and submits them to Emperor Murdoch Jr (Not Racist, but #1 with Racists) for approval.
Ok, so maybe it wasn’t exactly like that, and people will argue that you have to play everyone eventually so it all evens out. Personally if you asked me which ground I would least like to visit in the aftermath of an international window the Britannia would be a tied first with Goodison whilst United host the Premier League’s most accommodating visitors since the days when Fulham’s annual away win was at the expense of ourselves. Hopefully Wigan will send the Warriors a few weeks early to get a feel for the place ahead of the grand final.
So we arrive at the Britannia with a very respectable 7 points from our opening 3 games, a tally which would have accepted/expected before the start of the season, with only the hindsight of how poor Liverpool have been to think that a point won is more like 2 lost but the key is that we’ve at least matched our result from last year as well as finishing with 11. Our performances have been sub-par by our own high standards but we are still paying the price for the European Championships disrupting our pre-season.
Defensively we’ve been poor, conceding 7 since the Charity Shield, but there have been mitigating circumstances. We’ve switched between a back 3 (away) and a back 4 (home) in every game we’ve played. In these 4 games we’ve seen Savic, Kolarov and Kolo Toure all play some part and we’ve been without Clichy (paternity leave) and Richards (broken body) for most or all of the season so far.
Kompany and Lescott have failed to reach their own high standards of last season so far but Zabaleta has sweat blood for the team but unfortunately has exposed our need for at least one top class full back when both Clichy and Richards are absent. The single biggest weakness in the team has made his way to Florence in exchange for a young Serbian centre half, Nastasic, who I hope is from a defending school run jointly by Lawrence Taylor and Andy Morrison.
In midfield we’ve been a mixed bag as we’ve been without Barry, usually our calming influence, Rodwell has had to learn our style of play (he did give us better shape against Liverpool), Hindsight suggests De Jong’s head or heart wasn’t in it before AC Milan spent the best £3.5m by a club since Alan Shearer signed for Blackburn, and Silva has had to play catch up with his fitness, which resulted in a ‘mare against Southampton. Yaya has been terrific so far continuing his late surges up the field that tiring defenders cannot cope with, Milner his usual excellent self and Nasri much improved in parts. Surprisingly we’ve conceded a lot of possession and space in midfield for large parts of the games but the hope is the admittedly unknown, and little written about so far, Javi Garcia will combat this.
The arrival of Scott Sinclair should give us the additional width and pace that we’ve been lacking. I personally don’t remember Sinclair standing out for Swansea when I’ve seen them in the Premier League but if he can give us an outlet out wide when we’re under pressure and run the ball up the field quickly, stretching the opposition, then the signing will be an important one. Width is the key to our success.
Up front we’ve lost Aguero after 7 minutes of the season, and lost Mario to eye surgery. This has left us with Dzeko and Tevez (I don’t expect to see Scapuzzi, Nimely or Hiwula on the bench but that’s not necessarily a reflection on them) who almost seem unwilling to pass to each other at times (Dzeko’s goal aside) but Tevez has been fantastic so far putting a shift in every game and Dzeko has two goals from his 2 starts and has looked more confident.
[center]Our Opponents - Stoke City[/center]
What do we know about Stoke? Considered the anti-football, Tony Pulis has taken Sam Allardyce’s 4-4-2 percentage football tactics onto a grander scale (Interesting FFP note; They’ve a £95m transfer deficit since they were promoted to the Premier League) to the point the bench mark for who good Johnny Foreigner is if they ‘can do it on a wet Wednesday night at Stoke’. There tactics are simple get the ball forward as quickly and as often as possible into the final third, get the ball into the box as frequently as possible, set pieces, throw ins, angled crosses and have one of their huge strikers get on the end of it. Plan B as to get it to Etherington, Pennant or Kightly on the wings and get plenty of crosses in and also maximise from set pieces. Previous years has seen Rory Delap’s long throw utilised as a weapon allowing them to slow the pace of the game to their needs and allows the ball to reach the box from just inside the Stoke half.
Defensively tactics have been ‘if it moves or looks like it might move kick the fuck out of it!’ or that’s what Huth and Shawcross have led us to believe.
It’s worth remembering that it was Tony Pulis’ Gillingham on that grey day at Wembley that stood in our way the day after Alex Calvo-Garcia scored the goal that took Scunthorpe in the third division back in May of 1999. We will always be his Cup Final.
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[/center]A quick statistical view of the Arsenal game (the best opponent for comparison so far as to how they will play against us) shows us that they had less than half of the passes Arsenal had and only a third of the total possession. Importantly 45% of those passes (107 of 240) were attempted in the final third, 43 of those 240 passes were long and 65% of all passes (155) were forward passes.
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[/center]Their summer transfers suggest this is not about to change as Kightly has been added on the wing, Steven N’Zonzi has been drafted in to challenge Cattermole in the disciplinary charts and Charlie Adam has come in to stand in the centre circle, spend his wages at the pie cabin and only move if he’s certain of a goal or taking a set piece.
They’ve also boosted their front line of players who’ve created careers out of scoring against City (President: Peter Crouch Vice President: Dougie Freedman Life President: Robbie Keane 14,254 members) by signing race horse owner Michael Owen
It’s been a pretty solid start so far for the Potters, they avoided opening day defeat in a pretty tricky tie at Reading thanks to Federici, followed by a work man like 0-0 (i.e. if they played ‘til Christmas it would still have been nil-nil) at home to Arsenal. They then fought back from behind twice at Wigan to claim a point.
So how do we stop them? In short, the key to success for them will be to get high balls into crouch in the Penalty Area. Against Arsenal they aimed high diagonal balls at Crouch in the hope he’d get on the end of one.
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[/center]He’s actually not that great in the air for his size but if he’s given space he will score. He’s actually deceivingly good on the floor for someone his size (last years goal against us was a fluke though) and he’s always given us trouble regardless of which of his previous 60 clubs he’s been at. However if we shut the supply down by doing everything we can to close down and block the crosses coming in that will be half the battle won.
What about that bloke with the throw? UEFA got wise to Delap last year and ordered the width of the pitch be increased in last years Europa League. This year the FA have followed suit as all pitches must be a standard size now reducing the effectiveness of the throw. Taking this into account, his decreasing influence in open play and the fact that he’s only played 11 minutes so far this season I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t pick him. It’s worth pointing out that Hart was the first goalkeeper to work him out, taking the bizarre step of standing at the edge of the penalty area, ahead of the players, and catching the ball before it entered the six yard box.
[center]City's gameplan[/center]
So what will we do? Good question, if we had a full strength side and there wasn’t the potential for 4 debutants on Saturday this would be a tough game to win. Add in thousands of air miles, injuries to key members of the squad and several learning each others names it’s going to be even tougher. The dimensions and the noise of the Brit are designed to make it tough for sides not familiar with playing there but we’ve murdered in our last 2 home league meetings and comfortably the better side in the Cup Final
I would be tempted to try and play Stoke at their own game and field a 4-4-2 with Yaya and Rodwell both holding in midfield and play with Sinclair and Milner/Silva on the wings, , I’d leave Nasri out, aiming balls into the box on an angle for Dzeko with Tevez playing off him. At the back I’d choose Clichy/Maicon as overlapping fullbacks to support the wing play if that does leave Kolarov and Zabaleta to fend off Ozil, Di Maria and Ronaldo on Tuesday night.
Form is not on our side as we’ve not won in the league at the Britannia since Gerard Wiekens scored (a goal which cannot be found on youtube) in Jan 1999, in a Sky game, 13,679 including 2,289 blues, that was a major catalyst in our claim up the third division table (and Stoke’s tumble out of the playoffs).
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Whilst where on memory lane… (Tony Vaughan, eh? He cost £1.35million in 1997)[/center]
The last 3 league visits have all ended in 1-1 draws and all City’s goals coming in the last 10 minutes but we’re not the same team that’s as physically intimidated as others.
Referee:
Mark Clattenberg. Refereeing at the Britannia in the last couple of years has been nothing short of disgraceful. Fortunately the Premier League has responded to that by appointing Mark…oh.
Prediction? You must be joking. Ultimately if we play to our best and Stoke play to their best we’ll win comfortably. If we don’t play 100% or have one eye on the Champions League on Tuesday (not a priority for me) and Stoke are allowed to play their own game as in the previous 4 seasons then we’ll have a tough game on our hands.
