Johnny Baguette
Alert Team
Johnny On The Spot:
#AND-BREATHE...The strangest of seasons continues with a Manchester City win that should have been much more emphatic than it ultimately was, but boy, will we take it...This is the time of the Premier League campaign when sides with title winning aspirations must get ruthless in order to succeed and very often it takes cool heads developed through years of hard won experience to break deadlocks. As wobbling Tottenham and Arsenal dropped more points ahead of us earlier in the day, up stepped the triumvirate of Touré, Silva and Aguero to ensure Planet Blue will breathe easier tonight...Hampered by continual ankle clatterings Silva is at times almost wrestling with himself to run back into form, but he never gives up. Yaya remains a brilliant enigma who continues to deliver crucial interventions as he did today, whilst Kun who should really have gone home with yet another match ball, now only needs 6 more goals for 100 up in the Premier League. All three of these serial medal winners were desperately needed to help take The Blues back to the top of the scoring charts, redress a flagging goal difference and consequently maintain distance behind us on the resurgent Stretfords and the never say die Hammers...But why was their application bolstered by the imperious Kompany so vital today?...For Aston Villa, read Aston Vacant. That City went in goalless at the break against what has been reduced to a non-entity of a football team beggared belief. No less than 80% of the first half possession went to City with Villa managing only an astonishing 74 passes. It wasn't just the hopelessly off the pace Bony's static profligacy that had The Etihad tearing its hair out, but the fact that Manuel Pellegrini's men were again meandering through a massively important contest apparantly shorn of urgency and real endeavour. It made for a turgid opening 45 minutes but thankfully, the eventual discovery of extra gears meant that the gifts offered up so meekly by Remi Garde's shocking side were finally gobbled up...And so to Norwich again next weekend who have lost 9 of their last 10 matches in all competitions, surely offering up an opportunity to City to build upon today's crucial win. The Blues will have had a full week's training ahead of that one and as a season long injury crisis continues to ease, we will be another 7 days closer to the return of the missing Delph, Nasri and De Bruyne in order of scheduled reappearance...There remains a lot of hard work to be done with no remaining margin for error, but despite 3 dreadful consecutive defeats, The Blues are still in control of their own Premier League destiny if they can continue to harness the experience they hold over our rivals the way they did today.
Stats © 2016 Sky Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
#AND-BREATHE...The strangest of seasons continues with a Manchester City win that should have been much more emphatic than it ultimately was, but boy, will we take it...This is the time of the Premier League campaign when sides with title winning aspirations must get ruthless in order to succeed and very often it takes cool heads developed through years of hard won experience to break deadlocks. As wobbling Tottenham and Arsenal dropped more points ahead of us earlier in the day, up stepped the triumvirate of Touré, Silva and Aguero to ensure Planet Blue will breathe easier tonight...Hampered by continual ankle clatterings Silva is at times almost wrestling with himself to run back into form, but he never gives up. Yaya remains a brilliant enigma who continues to deliver crucial interventions as he did today, whilst Kun who should really have gone home with yet another match ball, now only needs 6 more goals for 100 up in the Premier League. All three of these serial medal winners were desperately needed to help take The Blues back to the top of the scoring charts, redress a flagging goal difference and consequently maintain distance behind us on the resurgent Stretfords and the never say die Hammers...But why was their application bolstered by the imperious Kompany so vital today?...For Aston Villa, read Aston Vacant. That City went in goalless at the break against what has been reduced to a non-entity of a football team beggared belief. No less than 80% of the first half possession went to City with Villa managing only an astonishing 74 passes. It wasn't just the hopelessly off the pace Bony's static profligacy that had The Etihad tearing its hair out, but the fact that Manuel Pellegrini's men were again meandering through a massively important contest apparantly shorn of urgency and real endeavour. It made for a turgid opening 45 minutes but thankfully, the eventual discovery of extra gears meant that the gifts offered up so meekly by Remi Garde's shocking side were finally gobbled up...And so to Norwich again next weekend who have lost 9 of their last 10 matches in all competitions, surely offering up an opportunity to City to build upon today's crucial win. The Blues will have had a full week's training ahead of that one and as a season long injury crisis continues to ease, we will be another 7 days closer to the return of the missing Delph, Nasri and De Bruyne in order of scheduled reappearance...There remains a lot of hard work to be done with no remaining margin for error, but despite 3 dreadful consecutive defeats, The Blues are still in control of their own Premier League destiny if they can continue to harness the experience they hold over our rivals the way they did today.
Stats © 2016 Sky Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
