The Manager said, "We're hoping that the concerns we had last night will allay somewhat. Vincent was struggling somewhat towards the end of the game and we had to take him off."Wayne Bridge had to come off with a tight hamstring, and we are hopeful that will not be too serious because we missed him when he went out of the game.
"Stevie Ireland has a really bad ankle after one of their players fell on top of him. He went over on it and we will have to see how he is. They are all key players for us and we would like them to be available this weekend but it's a short turnover time so we could be missing a few."
And the good:
"We will check on Craig as well, he was back here and training well while we were in Denmark. He has had a little bit of discomfort, so we want to be careful but he may well be an option.
"Valeri Bojinov had 75 minutes in the reserves and came through that well, so he is an option at the weekend. Nigel de Jong had a virus and missed a couple of days, but he should be OK," Mark concludes."
So even in the worst case scenario - Bridge, Kompany, Ireland and Bellamy not making it we still have quite a good team we could put out:
There is an obvious weakness at left back, but that aside it should still be enough to beat a very poor Sunderland side. It's possible that Bozhinov isn't quite up to starting, in which case we'd be back to the Caicedo/Evans dilemma again. There can be no doubting Evans' work rate but I still think Caicedo is closer to being an effective Premier League centre forward. And that was the worst case scenario. Bellamy, Ireland et al could conceivably play. And given that we're going into an international break we don't need to be as cautious about bringing people back as we would otherwise be.
2 comments:
Bellamy was in the squad for Aalborg at first, but took back out to make sure he was fit. So I would think he would be ready, if he isn't I wouldn't mind to see Bojinov start.
That team you have thought up doesn't look to bad to me to be honest, it would also be intresting to see Elano play without Ireland, like you said we should have enough to beat Sunderland.
I'm quite nervous about Garrido after his performance against Aalborg. He was a complete liability defensively. I don't think its a coincidence we completely loss control of the game once he replaced Bridge. He's likely to face Malbranque who is quite fast and tricky. Does Berti Glauber finally get a game now as he can play both on the left and in Central defense?
I like Garrido but I wonder if its time to shift him from defense to MF where he could be deployed as a left winger. He's much more comfortable going forward anyway. In fact when he came off the bench
thursday I thought he would replace Robinho or Evans (w/Robinho going up front).
I realize we have Petrov but he's not fit yet and Robinho might not be with City next season. If Garrido is with us next season as coverage for left back then he needs to be loaned out to improve defensively.
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