by Douglas Higginbottom » Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:56 pm
After the press conference at COMs it was back to work at Carrington. 20 players out today including Lescott who got the usual round of applause from all the players and staff as Silvinho did yesterday and has been quite a regular thing in recent times. Instant impression of him when he was stood next to Micah was wow this guy is a big unit. Not as many of the reserves there today as they are playing at Hull tonight I understand. Just Weiss and McGivern plus of course Taylor. Johnson and RSC were not around today but that's part of their programme at the moment and they will be hard at it again tomorrow.
Definitely just a settling in day for JL as they went through all the warm up stuff and some fun routines set up to get everyone going.The first football work was very much about passing and switching the play around with 2 sets of 5 a side goals at each end to score in. Normal play except for in a central corridor where it was only 1 touch to ensure it was moving about quickly. Then onto a half pitch game and again looking for quick movement and touch. Hard to pick out too much but Ade stood out to me. The guy really does have everything and just looked exceptional. I can only remember one goal being scored in this session and it was a right footed shot which caught everybody out from McGivern.Hardly noticed Lescott to be honest but I was impressed with one lovely pass he sprayed out to the right wing with his right foot. TBH did one of his trademark efforts on SWP as he looked like scoring. He didn't score , it would probably have been a penalty but most important SWP wasn't hurt.
At the end the strikers had some shooting practice with Eddie N kneeling and feeding on the edge of the box. It was either first time efforts or chest control and hit .They have done this before with mixed success but today there was some great finishing pretty well from them all , Tevez,Ade,Robi,Bellamy. A few went into the field behind but the quality was good and even Eddie commented on how good it was.
Some players signed autographs again at the end as did Mark H. He even had a quick photo for one young girl. No insights into who will play tomorrow but looking at the 20 on show it's a quality side whoever plays. You definitely have to pinch yourself looking at the fantastic array of players on show to realise it is CITY.
Flying out tonight at about 5pm and they will be coming back straight after the game so a limited training session is likely on Friday.So much positive attitude around the camp as you would expect but I think they also know how important the next 2 games are for us.