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1 min: Hands have been shook, shoulders have ben bumped and mascots have been led out and then sent back in. All of that means we are ready to go. City are dressed in blue and playing left to right; Chelsea are dressed in black with flashes of yellow and doing the opposite to City.
13:26 Andy Mills has been chewing his nails over the Manchester City midfield but he has stopped that long enough to type out the first email of the day: "Never mind the defence the central midfield looks pedestrian with Garcia and Rodwell. The one saving grace is the Frenchman isn't starting! Come on City." Andy has a point there.
13:23 Maybe this jazzy little number, will get you going.
13:19 Sooooooooooooo, anyone out there?
13:15 Did you read Daniel Taylor's interview with Mancini? You should have, the City manager had some very interesting things to say, not least on Samir Nasri:
"I think Samir has fantastic qualities. With his quality, he should always play well. Every game he could be the difference. A player of this quality could be one of the best players in Europe. But it's not happening. Sometimes a player thinks it's enough what they did the year before and doesn't understand that every day they should improve. If you are a top player you know you can improve until the last day of your career but sometimes you get players who think it is not important to work and this is their worst mistake. Samir can do better than this year. He is a top player but he has not been playing at his level."
Any City fans out there with an opinion on this?
13:05 The teams are in. Terry does not make the starting line-up and he will be joined on the bench by Fernando Torres after Benítez, rightly, decided that Ba would have a better chance of scoring against the Manchester City defence. And what a defence that is. City fans look away now: without Kompany, your central defensive pairing is Kolo Toure and Nastasic; doesn't really inspire confidence, does it? Jack Rodwell makes his first start since September. Those teams in full are:
Manchester City: Hart, Zabaleta, Kolo Toure, Nastasic, Clichy, Garcia, Milner, Rodwell, Silva, Yaya Toure, Aguero
Subs: Pantilimon, Lescott, Kolarov, Nasri, Sinclair, Tevez, Dzeko
Chelsea: Cech; Ivanovic, Cahill, D Luiz, Cole; Mikel, Lampard (c); Ramires, Mata, Hazard; Ba
Subs: Turnbull, Azpilicueta, Terry, Bertrand, Oscar, Moses, Torres
12:47 You may, or may not, have noticed that those pesky tech problems that plagued us here in GU Central yesterday have yet to be fixed, despite the computer nerds staying up all night and writing big, complicated numbers on a blackboard in an effort to solve it. Ho hum. So this means, once more, we are unable to use our fancy-pants minute-by-minute tool and that we have to go back, way back, to the old-fashioned way of doing things. Still, let's not let that get in the way of our fun, eh?
Good afternoon one and all
Remember those ambrosial days of 2009? Lower energy bills, AAA credit ratings, Susan Boyle belting out I Dreamed a Dream, Mark Hughes in charge of Manchester City? Wait, wait, wait, hold on just a minute. Mark Hughes was in charge of Manchester City? That Mark Hughes? No, no no. You must be joking. Oh, wait hold on a second, there's a call coming through. Hello? Oh, it's your cranium; it's got some space to rent. There is not a snowballs he was in charge. Well he was. And it was in 2009 that he lost his job. What did it for him? Well coming towards the end of the year, he drew seven games in succession and the lads in charge said that's enough and got Bobby Mancini instead.
Since then City have been doing pretty sweet. They've played some beauty ball, conquered the Cup and won the Premier League in an ending as unpredictable as The Usual Suspects. That's all in the past though and the present is proving to be rather painful indeed. This season, they couldn't make it past the group stages in the Champions League, said hello and waved goodbye to the League Cup in the third round and following the recent draws with QPR and Liverpool and the loss to Southampton, it seems they are out of the race for the Premier League too. Ooopsy. If they were to lose or draw today, it will be the first time they have gone four Premier League games without a win since Hughes was the given that bulky boot to the bottom.
Is Mancini close to that same boot? He doesn't think so and he had a bullish response when our very own Daniel Taylor asked him about his future come the season's end. "Since we started to win, in May 2011, Manchester City are the best team in England, are they not? We won three trophies, Manchester United two, Chelsea two, Liverpool one. No other team has won more than us ... I don't understand it [speculation about his future]. I could if we had won nothing for three years. It would be difficult for me to stay then. I couldn't stay in a team where I wasn't doing a good job. But I have done a good job here."
We'll have to wait and see if his respective employers agree with the Italian's assessment but for now the stark reality is that City are staring a 15-point gap between them and the top of the table and, unless they win the FA Cup, a trophyless season full-square in the face. Maybe they should have held onto Nigel de Jong.
It may not be all rosy smiles and unicorn kisses for Mancini right now but it could be a whole lot worse, he could be Rafa Benítez. It was 91 days ago that Rafa's reign began against the same opposition he faces today. Back then the fans greeted him with undiluted vitriol and not much has changed since. How he carries on in the face of such opposition, man will never know. But while the boos have rung out and Chelsea have exited two cup competitions under Benítez – we won't count the Big Cup – not everything is rotten in the state of Stamford Bridge (though Fernando Torres' one-goal-in14-games form certainly is).
Their form over the last six games – 11 points from a possible 18 – is only bettered by Manchester United and Tottenham; the same goes for their away form since Benítez took over. They also have the ever-sublime Juan Mata (who really is a joy to behold), Branislav Ivanovic (largely) been rock-like, has been while Frank Lampard in the form of his life. The midfielder has scored 11 goals in his 13 Premier League starts for Chelsea this season and is aiming to score in five consecutive league appearances for only the third time in his entire career. Plus if they win today, they will be just one teensy, teeny, toy, trifling, trivial point off second place.
All of this when you mix it together should make for a cracking encounter. As soon as the teams are in, you'll be the first to know, pinky promise.
via The Guardian World News http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/feb/24/premier-league-manchester-city-chelsea-live
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