Not a bad week to start a Man City blog

By: Patrick | August 21st, 2007

So I’ve been reading TheOffside.com for the last couple of months, and was thinking about joining in as a blogger. My strategy was to wait a couple of weeks, see what club in the English Premiership would be worth spending an absurd amount of time on, and then jump on the bandwagon.

Well…my choice was pretty easy.

First, quickly, a little about myself. I’m a 23-year-old recent journalism graduate from Cal State Long Beach, where I was sports editor of the school newspaper. Last year, I occasionally covered the L.A. Galaxy and Chivas USA for the Torrance Daily Breeze. Reporting is my first love, so I’m going to try and bring some original reporting to this blog (which should be a challenge considering Manchester is about 7,000 miles away, but I’ll see what I can do).

Since I’m not a life long Manchester City finatic, this blog will be a little bit more objective than some of the other blogs on TheOffside, but the goal is to make this blog the go-to-place for Manchester City News. So let’s get to it!

That Game Sunday

Some of you might have heard that Manchester City had a pretty decent result last Sunday. In one of those “how did that happen” matches, Man City got completely outplayed from their neighbor United, except is one very important statistical category - goals.

It was the second most incredible match of the weekend (the Red Bulls-Galaxy match was beyond incredible), and to me, the biggest thing I took away from 1-0 derby win was that Micah Richards is an alien from another planet.

Richards didn’t single handily beat Manchester Untied (Richard Dunne, baby Schmeichel and a Nemanja Vidic deflection helped), but it was the 19-year-old that stole the show stopping one United chance after another.

The win puts City, who many thought were relegation contenders, at the top of the EPL after three matches, with a maximum nine points.

There were some drawbacks in the historic victory, most notably the injury to newly acquired (I guess everyone is newly acquired) striker Valeri Bojinov, who tore up his right knee and will be out five months. Which leads to the next part of this blog…

More Transfers Coming

With the Bulgarian Bojinov out, rumor has it Sven’s spending spree is going to continue, as he tries to fill the hole. His target? Nicolas Anelka.

Bringing Anelka back to City, would bring some much needed EPL experience to the club (although they have done just fine without any experience), and he has the potential to carry Man City if he gets in top form. If he could replicate what he did during the 2003-04 season for City (17 goals in 32 matches), it would be a huge plus to squad.

The other position Sveny is reportedly looking at is keeper. Although baby (aka Kasper) Schmeichel has yet to yield a goal in three matches, I do think it is fair to say that the young lad has got a little lucky. Anybody notice late in the match when he unexplainably fell to the ground, giving Tevez a wide-open goal to head the ball into, but missed?

Anyway, I think it would be a good move to bring in a more proven keeper, Sven seems to agree. From a variety of reports on the internet, the likely target is Livorrno goalie Marco Amelia.

If Man City does bring in a keeper, there will be a real log jam at goalie when everyone is healthy, with Andreas Isaksson, Schmeichel, England under-21 goalie Joe Hart and possibly Amelia. So, although Schmeichel is yet to concede a goal, it’s not out of the question that he could even go out on loan some time this season.

Lastly, Sven is also reportedly interested in beefing up the midfield, with Guti at Real Madrid.

Expectations

No, Manchester City will not win the Premiership this year, and odds of them finishing in the top 4 are about 15/1, which still seems a bit high. But, what was almost unthinkable two weeks ago is that City does have a shot at the top 6 (although, still unlikely), and finishing in the top half, which seems to be City’s goal, is a real possibility. This weekend will be another huge challenge, with a trip to the Emirates to face Arsenal. There is no way City can win that one, right?

More to come

There are too many storylines with this club for me to talk about everything right now, but check back regularly for the latest news and opinion, and suggestions will be welcomed.

I thought I would leave you with this.