Sturridge vs. FC Midtjylland - Hands off Chelski

I spent much of Thursday mulling over whether to write a match preview on the Uefa Cup game and ultimately decided against it. Sometimes it’s damned if you do damned if you don’t when surmising things before a match.

The constant media speculation over the last two weeks has been tiring. In fact there was so much noise that we decided to ‘keep stum.’ Why add to the media and cyber frenzy of speculation. More on that in later blog posts. But all the same, most fans would probably agree it has softened the usual beginning-of-season excitement considerably.

Compounding concern about the game, Danish friends and clients were calling me Thursday to report that we should be worried. Members and fans will not be heartened to hear that this worry was most pronounced when discussing how comfortable FC Midtjylland is when playing at home. The return leg will not be easy.

A beginning-of-season re-union with a City mate and member of MCFCfans.com did nothing to help matters. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said before going on to report recent FC Midtjylland successes. The final ‘nail in the coffin’ though was reading a betting prediction in a newspaper that boldly recommended its’ readers to back both City and Villa to be leading their respective opposition at half time and full time. “In fact it’s so much a dead cert you might as well put them in a double as well,” it finished. Well if either team was going to spoil that double it was going to be City!

City started as if they were in a friendly game. Not just any friendly game. The first friendly game of the pre-season when players’ minds are still on the beach, the pool, and the beer. The body language was noticeably lackluster. Passes went astray and the defense was disorganised.

Olsen’s finish (video on our home page) was top quality but it was gifted by poor defending. It was City’s wake up call to get some attacking going and there were some positive moves around at times. We could have scored when hitting the bar twice but it always felt as if we lacked a real threat to the Danish goal.

Petrov stood out, Kelvin Etuhu’s pace is something to look forward to, and we know Sturridge has real potential. But Elano seemed distant, Caicedo was pointless, and too many moves needlessly broke down, sometimes to fruitless show-boating.

Hughes has since pointed to the real lack of fitness in the side. "We are trying to get a group of players up to match fitness and that was evident the other night in the Uefa Cup," Hughes said. "It will not happen overnight. Maybe we will have to wait because our training is different from what they have been doing. It is about making players able to cope with the demands of the Premier League. To compete in the Premier League you have to be athletic, dynamic and sustain that performance from the first game to the last." He went on to point out that the new regime may be a shock to some of the players.

What is a big positive now is that the football is starting in earnest. The off-the-pitch concerns are very real but there were there a year ago. The time to protest was back then. There may be a suitable time to protest again in future but only once we've observed more events and facts. There is much to the situation off the pitch and we will try and cover this in a later post. The team itself is in tact. We’re chasing strikers and new players albeit with cash that is possibly not available (see Telegraph story of 13th August). Arguably we have a better manager in Mark Hughes, even though the messy episode to replace Sven did our reputation no good. Hughes probably has what it takes to see us through a possible future change in ownership. Whether he judges that sticking it out is in his best interests only he knows. It is likely that he has seriously considered his position, but let's hope he's prepared to wait and work on the team in the meantime.

What is most important now is that we back him and the team. We must get playing well on the pitch and as fans we play a part in that with the tone of our support. We're in a difficult situation, but for now it's probably best to keep the terraces focused on the pitch.

We’re interested in how many of our readers are going to the match so please go to the poll at this link on our home page where you can also join the webjam community of City fans at MCFCfans.com.

MCFCfans.com

PS. Check out the profile and new photos of the MCFC Babies in Ghana on our MCFC Babies page. We’ll be following the team’s progress with the help of team coach and member of MCFCfans.com, Peter Amoabil. The Under 12s recently won a trial game against Kanvili FC 4-2 and will play them again away from home this Sunday. Here’s hoping the application to the league is successful.