Catching Up; Arsenal Come to Town (or more precisely, to City)

By: Thad | September 10th, 2009

We’ve let a couple of weeks–the end of the transfer window and the international break–pass without any comment on things City; time to get back in the swing of things with two massive matches on the horizon against Arsenal and Manchester United.

Biggest news of the last two weeks was confirmation of Richard Dunne’s move to Aston Villa. The club paid Dunne a nice tribute on its website in announcing the transfer, but Dunne soon made public comments ripping City CEO Garry Cook for his handling of the transfer. The upshot is Dunne apparently feels like he was forced out; it would not be surprising if Dunne had little love lost for Cook after the latter’s comments a summer ago stating that Richard Dunne doesn’t sell shirts in the Far East, an obnoxious comment and unwarranted insult of City’s former captain. This hasn’t been the first and one doubts it will be the last time Cook will be publicly called out. Mark Hughes has chimed in too with a defense of Cook that comes-off as somewhere between half-hearted and unconvincing.

Best of luck to Dunnie at Villa; I was to sorry Villa knocked out of the Europa Cup before Dunne had an opportunity to play in it. City fans by and large were sad to see Dunne go because he is a player we generally liked and because he played a vital role in keeping City in the Premiership during some lean times. Taking Dunne out of the City lineup is like removing a familiar, been-there-for-years chair from your living room. At the same time, few can doubt that this was a good move at this time for all concerned.

Dunne’s old armband is being turned over to Kolo Toure, a fine choice. (Gareth Barry might also have been a plausible option). Toure and early-season star Adebayor get their first crack at their old club Arsenal on Saturday. Arsenal, of course, were brilliant during the first week of the season and could feel both aggrieved and unlucky to have walked away from Old Trafford empty-handed a couple of weeks back.

This is a true test of strength for City. Carlos Tevez is definitely out, meaning Bellamy and Robinho are presumably in alongside Adebayor (though Robinho did pick up a little knock for Brazil last week). Getting 3 points over Arsenal is a big ask of course, but City simply cannot expect to break into the top 4 without holding its own in head-to-head match-ups with the established powers, especially at home.

No extensive preview of Arsenal is necessary, other than to say I expect it to be a tremendous match. We’ll be live-blogging the game here from 3 pm UK time Saturday–see you then!