The importance of arriving on time....

Wow!  Good thing that the Club was on time for our early morning start!  Some Spurs fans arrived a couple of minutes late and we got to regale them with the wonder of the Navas goal.  And what a goal!  Was he just lucky?  Who cares!  It was a thing of beauty.

Navas is turning into a real star.  The energy he is bring to the pitch is awesome.  I'm sort of answering my own question in the previous post about him vs. Sunderland.

The mystery is: how do we score 7 against Norwich, 5 against Moscow, 6 against Spurs, and get shut out vs. Sunderland?!

It's enough to drive a person to drink!  Good thing we meet in a pub!

:-)

Navas vs. Sunderland

When Jesus Navas entered the match, the impact was immediate.  He basically did whatever he wanted down the right side.  Almost to the exclusion of trying down the left, his efforts looked so good.  I lost count of the number of crosses he had.

But nothing came of it.  In fact (if memory serves me right), I don't think we had one on target chance from what seemed like a dozen crosses.  What do people think?  Was it poor crossing on the part of Navas? Was the Sunderland defense just too good in the middle?  It seemed like every one of the crosses went right to one of their defenders.

We also had 14, that's FOURTEEN corners.  And barely a good chance from any of them.  How can our set pieces be so poor?  It's crazy!  What do these guys do in practice if they are not working on set pieces.  After a while, we just gave up trying to put the ball in the box and set up short.

The good news is we have an extra week to work on it!  :-)

C'mon City!

Well that's a fine kettle of fish....

Wow, a team that scores a dozen goals in two games can't score one against a team at the bottom of the table.  Ouch.

Are they psyching themselves out on the road, or the fact that Sunderland have just owned us at their ground?  Or did these factors come together to make it so we can't score there.  At all.

The commentator pointed out that we've SCORED more goals they have have SHOTS on net.  And one semi defensive lapse is all that was needed.  Sigh.

To be fair, we didn't get much help from the man in black.  On the goal, Milner was clearly was pushed over from behind by the goal scorer, Bardsley.  And Sunderland should have been playing with 10 as Garcia was the recipient (for a change) of a tackle that should have been a straight red card, although not even a yellow was given.

But, we're not going to win games where we don't score at all.

And one thing is for sure: We can't blame Joe Hart.

Thank you Andrew!

+Andrew Morisey thank you, thank you, thank you for setting up this blog and for all you have done for the Club!

We'll be thinking of you!

City v Southampton Viewing Schedule!

Long time no see, Blues!!!

We will be watching MCFC take on Southampton at our usual stomping grounds (Maggie McGarry's) to kick off our title-defending season. 

The match begins PROMPTLY on SUNDAY at 8:00 A.M. San Francisco time, so don't be late.

COME ON BOYS, LET'S GET ANOTHER!!

Manchester Derby Viewing Schedule!

Hello fellow Blues!!!

Big match this Sunday (kind of!)! The proud in battle SF Manchester City Blue supporters club will be in full force at the bright and early time of 5:15 A.M. for the Manchester Derby which commences PROMPTLY at 5:30 A.M. SHARP. We will be flying high from the top of the table as we meet the Rags at the hellhole that is Old Trafford.

This is an opportunity to come meet fellow City supporters, as well as a chance to see those "only come to church on Christmas and Easter" types! Haha. All in a good day out.

Some fun facts about this, the greatest of all matches Manchester (and Salford):

-City holds the highest record attendance for an English football match with 84,569. United holds the second highest, ironically at Maine Road due to Old Trafford suffering some damage from WWII (if only they'd finished the job!).

-City holds the largest victory, with a 6-1 win in January 1926.

-City's Joe Hayes and Francis Lee hold the top goalscoring honors of the derby, with 10 a piece.

Some come on down, have a pint or three, and come support the Blues in style!

Live Forever

Bayern Munich 2, Manchester City 0: Andy's Corner

Periodic Analysis & Opinion from Andrew, Supporter's Club Social Secretary:

Wow. I just finished watching this match, so I’m going to write this right now before my thoughts get colored with the opinions of others. I’m going for honesty here, not fairness, and this is not a predictive post – not meant to say I won’t change my mind later, but this is my reaction as of right now.

This was the hardest match of the year so far for us, as far as technical skill of the opponent and expectations. Leading up to the match, Mancini and others had guaranteed a “get your popcorn ready” type of atmosphere for City’s performance, and we were buzzing from breaking the Everton curse. We even felt an itch of validation from a viral video on YouTube of Ribéry lamenting the fact that Bayern had to play us in the Champions League. Everything seemed ripe for a match day full of excitement.

What ended up happening was a lesson in humility.

The first 10 minutes were some of the most exciting pieces of football I’ve seen from City ever – we were well drilled, pushing up on our opponents, getting the early step on them, stealing position, one-touching our passes, etc. I literally said to myself I have no idea what could happen this game. Bayern were obviously up for the task, yet probably a bit surprised how much bite we initially had to our bark.

Gareth Barry

And yet, somehow quickly hell broke loose. I would start by saying it began with #18 Gareth Barry. Now I’m been known to be a bit icy to our guy Barry in the first place, but I had loosened up on him given an excellent pre-season (especially a notable performance against Inter Milan)  and being what I thought was an acceptable midfield replacement for the usual De Jong week or two off due to injury. And in the first 10 minutes, Barry was actually good. He quickly showed his true colors though – losing possession NUMEROUS times, mis-stepping in defence (so much so it was a missed Barry challenge that lead to the counter attack that scored the first goal), and seemingly never being the right place at the right time. After the 2 goals were conceded, he seemed no better in the 2^nd half. I’m shocked Mancini kept him in through the first half, he was shocking.

Wingback vs. Fullback?

Another huge issue, and for me perhaps my biggest complaint about this match was the wing back roles that Clichy and Micah were assigned yet having no holding midfielders (perhaps because Barry sucks) or extra defenders to make up for the loss in the final 3^rd. The amount of times Ribéry and company were about to counter, run down the wings, and get us on the back heel because NO ONE WAS THERE was baffling. Obviously when De Jong came on this subsided a bit, but Christ if we are going to have this wild wingback stuff we either 5 in the back or more true holding midfielders because we will get burned if no one is out on the wings in our final 3^rd.

Yaya, oh Yaya

Which brings me to the other midfield issue. Now I’ve been fighting it like most City fans, any complaints about the legend that is #42 but this game proved some reality to the murmurs of certain Sky Blues about our holy relic Yaya. Can you answer “no” with a straight face to the question: “In the 2011-12 season, do you see Yaya Toure complaining about calls and throwing his hands up as much as he is actually making a play?” We all know this is what is happening. In addition he seems to not be as self-aware of the open spaces around the midfield he should be occupying. Again, I think this changed a bit De Jong came on, but the issue was still there.

Nitpicks

-Anyone who said they didn’t rate Jerome Boateng last year need only watch this match and look at his overpowering of Kun Aguero.

-Nasri was decent and ran a lot but his performance was a bit, how shall we say it… stale?

-ARGHHH MANCINI 2-0 DOWN and you put on TWO defensive subs between minutes 65-70?! Are you just accepting defeat? What happened to all that “play to the end” stuff after the Fulham draw?

-Yeah we got some crappy calls but we played a bit dirty too. Wasn’t like our (especially Dzeko) grabbing of the other players and complaining. #NotClassy

Hold Your Horses

With that being said, there were some positives and some things to think about.

1)    This is just one game. And a very hard one that. No team, including Barcelona, would find Bayern Munich away an easy match. Perhaps Mancini figures this is how a team gets built – hard fought games with some tough losses to build on the greater good. Or something like that.

2)    GAEL CLICHY WOW! He was absolutely the hero of this game, used his speed like he used to, completely dominated most of the pitch, a wingback as it should be! With that being said I still think we need to change our formation haha.

3)    Kun Aguero is a workhorse too! Don’t know what they put in the water down there in Argentina but he was running around like a more agile Tevez. Too bad he was getting pushed around by Ze Derrty Germans.

Anyway, just some quick thoughts. I think we will continue to do well in the league and the cup runs, but wow we just got welcomed (yet again) to the Champions League.

Over and out.

Live Forever,

Andrew