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Blog » Aston Villa 4 - Manchester City 2: It’s early days for City yet

Back to MCFCfans Blog Written on 17-Aug-2008 by malcylon

bojinov

August 17, 2008

The football has started and the first game of the season is out of the way. Manchester City lost 4-2 to Aston Villa and the train journey home is somewhat depressing. But don’t let the doomsayers and biased media fool you into thinking this was a drubbing.

It was a game of two halves with City playing much the better football as the first half wore on, even though Villa had the better chances early on. Joe Hart denied a couple of chances and others went wide, but City were beginning to show fluent passages of play.

City started the game without Bojinov who was injured in the warm up. He now looks to be side-lined for six months adding to the current striker crisis. But on paper this was always going to be an uphill struggle for City even with Bojinov. That City got to half-time at 0-0 was an achievement.

Ched Evans started up front as lone striker. Kelvin Etuhu, inexperienced as he is, lacked the confidence to push onto the by-line. One could only feel sorry for him at times because senior support failed to arrive. Petrov was the attacking outlet, and Elano and Johnson tried to fashion attacks from his distribution.

Where did it all go wrong? Well City gave the ball away in dangerous positions and allowed Villa players out wide to put crosses in to tall, unmarked danger men up front. In seven minutes Agbonlahor struck a hat-trick. It was extremely poor for City to concede as they did. But it was no capitulation. However, we’ve now conceded 12 goals in our last two league games.

Villa’s tall attack served by unchallenged crosses was a threat to a new central defensive pairing, who suffered from players in front giving the ball away too easily. We maybe missed Hamman’s clean-up operations. That said Tal Ben-Haim looked far more comfortable in central defence than he did at left-back on Thursday.

The City crowd was impressive and it didn’t feel as if the gloom that has surrounded the club for the last two weeks was the reason for the poor result. It felt like we lacked squad depth, midfield aggression, and up-front firepower. We’re desperately short of the right players in certain positions. But these are things that hopefully we can resolve given time. It also feels as if we’re in something of a transformation from Sven to Hughes in terms of tactics and regime. It will take time but sure it’s a far cry from the optimism of the first half of last season.

The game’s most humorous moment came from the front of the City end by the pitch. A City fan dressed in a maroon golf shirt had extended negotiations with stewards about one thing or another. Anecdotal evidence suggested the stewards may have sworn in front of his kids when addressing him, which didn’t go down too well. Villa fans monitoring the situation in the neighbouring end cottoned on to the maroon golf shirt before chanting, “Who’s that in a Villa shirt? Who’s that in a Villa shirt?...”

It was not the best start to the season but we’ll take issue with Claran Baynes, reporting for Setanta. “The Villans dominated the game from the first whistle with City on the back foot until they were awarded a dubious penalty as Michael Johnson fell in the box under the close attention of Luke Young.” Claran obviously wasn’t watching the same game.

Drop the expectations. It’s going to be a tough season. But this game was not necessarily the barometer we thought it would be. There was renewed promise following Thursday’s defeat, the players clearly need to adapt to the Hughes era, and the odd signing wouldn’t go amiss. One thing is certain, we won’t be ordering the new orange shirts.

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P.S. Our 'Thaksin Watch' page has now been launched. We're keen to attract opinion about our owner, the current situation, and how it will play out for City on the page. Please let us know if there is good quality commentary elsewhere that we can add to the page.

Manchester Evening News : match report

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Tags: premiership,manchester city,men,villa,aston villa,mcfc,thaksin,man city,mcfcfans,mark hughes,bojinov,setanta,joe hart

Comments

written on 17-Aug-2008

scribbs says:

Unless we can find a 15goal a season striker, it's going to be a long, hard season. Thought Boj was going to do the job this season, my hearft goes out to him
written on 17-Aug-2008

malcylon says:

We couldn't figure out why he wasn't playing as we didn't get to the game until late. We only found out after the game that he injured himself in the warm up. Achilles is usually a bad injury but I was a bit surprised that it was achilles in a warm up. Anyway scribbs I agree. He's been very unlucky.
written on 17-Aug-2008

Villa Supporter says:

Really entertaining game and I'm not just saying that cuz we won. Both sides played some good attacking football. City away fans were absolutely fantastic. Wish we had your Petrov - and Johnson !!
Always good to beat a bogey team.
written on 18-Aug-2008

scribbs says:

I don't know about you guys, but how do you injure yourself in a warm up. Today more and more you see players injured in the warmups, soccer, rugby, league . Are players overtrained?, under trained? It always amazes me that these injuries occur. Going back to the good old days, you got off the bus at the ground, got changed, had a kick around, played the game, got changed and did it all next week. I suppose if you took the All Blacks as example, back in the years when they were not professional playes, players like Colin Meads did a days work on the farm, drove two hours to training, trained, drove two hours back, played the test match, and the All Blacks ruled the world. Now I guess the same things happened in English football, the point I'm getting too, is what I alluded to at the start are the players under or under trained, too soft?
But then you're heart goes out to someone like Boj, gee talked about being cursed at City!!!!! Gee he's had more injuries in a year than I had playing football for 44 years. Never injured when playing 1st team football, all my injuries came playing Masters football (over 40!!! should have known better).
I hope he heals quick and well, he deserves some luck.
written on 18-Aug-2008

Ghanaianblue says:

What a bad start for us yesterday but that is the game of football for us ,you either lose,win or draw.Lets hope that we will get a good scoreline next time around.

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