I seem to remember that last year there was some talk of having a look at what the away fans were thinking before meeting our glorious team, so I decided to have nosey around the barcodes forums. It’s actually really interesting! The general feeling is that they are going to get beat.
I like that they seem to be resigned to fact that this is really not the first game of the season, so it doesn’t count ( which will be funny in May when they are struggling for 1-3 points to stay out of the drop zone ). On the other hand some of them seem to think that they have a chance because it’s our first game.
I got bored of doing this after a while, but I thought I would compile some comments in one place. There are couple of things of note.
This is their predicted starting 11:
Hart
Zab, Kompany, Lescott, Clichy
Fernandinho, Yaya
Navas, Silva, Jovetic
Negredo.
The most common view:
I think we're gonna get battered.
A semi intelligent point of view:
Just fire shots at their goal with any opportunity, with Hart's form over the past year he's bound to drop a howler.
And my favourite:
I can feel the pain of watching this match already.
There are more words of wisdom below.
So there you have it.
I would class this as bollox of the first order, but not to compete with Chinners. I just could not bring myself to post tits, apart from the one at the top.
Enjoy !
We're on a hiding to nothing, a point would be a great result. Am going, "better to travel in hope..." etc etc...
No Tevez, no Aguero no Silva. Just a load of new mediocre, overpriced foreigners. We''ll be alright
Best time to play these sides is first game. When they start to get into their stride (8-10 games in) they'll be much more dangerous. As an attacking force they really didn't create much against Arsenal the other day. With Tevez and Aguero missing we could nick something.
I don't see any point in getting negative about a game where we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
It all goes through Silva and Yaya. I'd task Sissoko with kicking Yaya and Tiote or Cabaye kicking Silva.
If you distract/hurt/upset these two City without Tevez and Aguero aren't the mountain people anticipate they will be. Negredo and Navas look average compared to the Argies.
Against pop opinion I think it will be tight game.
Honestly think this is our best chance in a long while to get something.
Aguero, Tevez, Natiscic, Nasri won't be playing. Navas and Negredo are new boys...Yaya is another year older and Silva will be coming back from Ecuador...
If we really put it about the first 15 min anything can happen.
We're going to get utterly fucking lashed and it's nothing to do with Pardew or Jonas. It's more to do with the fact that we simply aren't anywhere near on a level playing field to Man City. They've spent £100m in the last three months and over £1bn on player recruitment in the last few years - recently we've spent nothing and struggled to get a suspected rapist on loan.
I think they'll put between 4 and 6 past us depending on who's in nets as Pellegrini has them playing some wonderful stuff - their performance against Milan - when they turned it on was nothing to do with Milan being in preseason it was sheer technique, skill, tactical play and athleticism from Man City & I fear they'll do the same to us unless there's some kind of miracle.
First game of the season though, so anything can happen
I reckon we'll beat them 3-1. Just watch.
They'll comfortably beat us 3-0.
We'll sit back and play hump ball whilst Sissokko is wasted on the wing.
4-0 to them, with us failing to even register a shot on target.
Our season doesn't start against Man City.
Just fire shots at their goal with any opportunity, with Hart's form over the past year he's bound to drop a howler.
We shouldn't be rolling over for them, they've got a new manager and new players, so lets give them a decent game of it and not just let them go out and get an easy 3 points. They won't like us getting up at them and won't be expecting us to give them a hard game. We've got pretty much full strength 11 to choose from which could in all honesty get a win from this game.
I can feel the pain of watching this match already.
Hart
Zab, Kompany, Lescott, Clichy
Fernandinho, Yaya
Navas, Silva, Jovetic
Negredo.
I think we're gonna get battered.
I'm not even counting Monday as the start of the season
I'm not bothered about losing this one particularly, providing it's a respectable scoreline. All I want to see is us showing some attacking intent, as opposed to just sitting back all game and letting them just come at us for 90 minutes like we did last time.
Never been less enthusiastic for a start of a season as this one, think the fact we have failed to sell out our away tickets echo's this.
Prepare for Pardew to set us up to contain i.e sit on the edge of our box. After 8 minutes of scrappy play we will concede a poor goal, with no plan B we will stick Shola on and pump it up to him, resulting in us losing 3/4-0 and citeh not getting out of 3rd gear.
On the plus side its a good time to play them. As if we get beat as expected its not like its interrupting a run of winnable games as we can just start our season after that, also its good to get it out the way. Also, clutching at straws I know, Mn City might not be up to full speed yet and have a slow start to the season with having a new manager and a lot of new signings etc so we might even be able to nick something.
Realistically though as long as we put in a good performance and look competitive I don't really mind to much about the result, Man City away is a game most teams are going to have already written off this season and we can't really expect much.
I think we'll win
I think we will surprise people in this game, it will be tight and i fancy us nicking a point.
4-0 City. Debuchy sent off
I think we will lose, but the performance will be promising.
