Saturday 22 November 2008

City 3 - 0 Arsenal

  • How pleasing to see us play football and graft in the same game. This, I imagine, is the sort of synthesis that Hughes has been aiming for: dogged in defence, devastating in attack, built around strong performances through the spine of the team.
  • Those who have dissapointed this year were strongest: Dunne and Richards played as well as they have all season, both individually and as a pair. Kompany was back to his destructive best. Even Vassell and Benjani worked hard.
  • No surprises that the goals that won the game were scored by our two best players: Ireland and Robinho. Ireland now has six league goals this season: more than his career total before this year (4 in 2007/08 and 1 in 2006/07). Robinho now has 8 in the league: as many as our top scorer, Elano, did last term. He is now very likely to be the first City player to score ten league goals in a season since SWP and Robbie Fowler both did in 2004/05.
  • What a vote of no-confidence in Kasper Schmeichel: requesting FA permission to bring someone in ahead of him, and then rushing back a 'keeper with an alleged three/four week ankle ligament absence. With stories in most papers this week about a £60m Buffon bid (I've only started to take it seriously today, when it was on the back page of The Times), his time may well be limited.
  • How good to see Sturridge come on, win a penalty (not quite as questionable as his one at Stadium of Light last season, but not stonewall either), and score it confidently. But should we really be giving Elano excuses to complain?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I read somewhere last week a Hughes interview where he said they were going to ask for permission to bring in a keeper to go on the bench, as the usual third choice (whose name I forget) was also injured. Hughes made a point of being complimentary about Kasper saying that he thought Kasper did well against Hull and he was intending to play him while Hart was out. I thought this was good of Hughes as there were a couple of stories that we were looking for a keeper to go straight into the first team.

I felt for Kasper on Saturday as it must have been a bit gutting to miss out on a rare first team opportunity.