11.30

Morning everyone. Its a really nice day, shame I have to spend most of it inside at work…

After yesterdays team news it looks like there isn’t going to be a major difference to the team that delivered that utter shambles last Sunday at Wigan; Lucasz Fabianski will probably continue in goal (cringeee!), Sagna will stay on at right back with a central partnership of Sol and Silvestre (as he continues his farewell tour), with Gael Clichy completing the left side of the defence. No difference so far then..

The midfield three could have a slightly different look to it, it would be good to see the boss accept that Nasri and Rosicky can’t always play together and either plays on or the other anchored of course by the returning Alex Song who is going to have to have a very good first game back. As poor as Citeh have been at times, going forward they are a massive threat.. multiply that threat by x4 because we have a defence that’s unorganised and contains two players whom aren’t fit to play Sunday League football. Denilson isn’t fit to play so Craig Eastmond may well get to feature in this game. We really don’t have too many options though so maybe Nasri and Rosicky will have to play in the midfield three to make up the numbers – hopefully Diaby has dropped off the end of the planet after his performance last week. He can’t start..surely..

Up front I expect to see Robin van Persie start, there is a chance he could play just behind Nicklas Bendtner (as he doesn’t deserve to be shunted out to the wing) with Theo Walcott on the right. That means we don’t have a big threat from both sides of the attacking three but its not like we have a habit of slinging in the ball for a striker to get his head on it.

Lets get this straight. Manchester City are a bunch of money throwing Arabs, but they are a very good football team with some exceptional players in the form of their lives; Carlos Tevez, Craig Bellamy (yes, him) and a few other players I can’t remember the names of (being really in-depth here), but theres truth in the phrase ‘the table tells no lies’ and a win would put them only potentially three points behind us, we need to win now, guarantee the third spot and try to stunt the development of a team that is undoubtedly on the rise.

I want to see passion, motivation, drive and urgency – the players need to look at the table and realise this season isn’t as over as they thought it was, we won’t win the title but we could suffer major damage to our seasons perceived improvements if we slip into a dogfight for fourth which isn’t out of the equation just yet.

I can’t help that worry we won’t see much of an improvement though, I suppose it could be a blessing I’m unable to watch this game.

I have time on my hands tomorrow so I’ll try to write a more detailed blog then.

Til tomorrow.