Milan preview

Amidst all the depressing speculation, it's nice to be interrupted by a football match; and quite a special football match at that. The biggest opponents since the first CoMS glamour friendly in 2003, it should be a great occasion. Milan seem set to bring the core of the team that has reached three of the last six European Cup finals: Gattuso, Pirlo, Ambrosini, Seedorf and Maldini (those last two have nine European Cup winners' medals between them). Seemingly there will be no Kaka' or Ronaldinho, which at least spares us from the potential embarrassment of City fans booing Ronaldinho, or singing "you glory grabbing bastard".

City have been slowly improving thus far, and we can hope to see another competitive performance tomorrow. This game comes only five days before the big matches against FC Midtjylland and eight days before Aston Villa. There will be much attention on whether Corluka plays (I've given up trying to second guess the 'in the knows' inhabiting various City and Spurs fora), but the most interesting selection will be up front. The core of the defence and midfield is more or less in place (left back and right wing still up for grabs though), whereas up front Vassell, Sturridge, Evans and Bozhinov may all be on roughly level terms.

On a personal note, I'm going on holiday tomorrow afternoon, back on Friday 15th, so there'll be no blogging till then. It's been a pretty demoralising week to be an internet centred City fan. Since the Corluka rumour broke on Monday night, every other minute is spent refreshing Newsnow, Bluemoon and ManCityFans; hanging on the edge of the 'in the know' contributors, trying to interpret Mark Hughes' prevarications. The attitude on Bluemoon is fevered and not always pleasant: as ever, it's a lack of clarity that causes problems. So it's going to be good to get away from cycle of gossip and conjecture (there's no internet access where I'm going) for a bit. I'm back next Friday night: I'll do some sort of season preview and one for the Villa game as well. And then on Sunday I'll be there, Doug Ellis Lower, block Q2.