Use of subs will be crucial for them. Barca will have them running about after the ball for long periods of play.
Just got back from that London. It seems there are quite a lot of Cockney City fans from the sky blue shirts getting on the train at Euston.
Not surprised, little Luke. If the Arabs hadn't bought £ity's soul, those same fans would have been supporting Chavs. In fact, they were probably Chav fans just before the Arabs moved in.
I think they're either in the Blue Zone at the Natural History Museum or at Traitors' Gate at the Tower. All the gloryhunters are now wearing sky blue and on Virgin trains from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly.
Actually, I wonder what will happen to all of United's plastic fans? Most of them will probably switch to £ity, but as none of them live in Manchester that won't necessarily be the case. I can Chavs picking up a lot of the ex-United fans.
Watching this just brings to mind the final days of AVB. The Barca passing and possession is not worldy. Just fast and accurate. Why should we not expect highly paid professionals world-wide to do this ??
£ity are already looking as embarrassing as Arsenal did, when they played Barca. Let's hope Barca score an early goal, because I doubt any of us could stand watching £ity park the bus all night.
Chelsea beat Barcelona by making them play 90% of the game passing the ball square just outside their penalty area with a 1% chance of catching them on the break. City are better than that, surely?
Yes, I agree that £ity look more effective when they break, than Chavs or Arsenal did. Pelligrini's plan seems to be to let Barca do all the running for most of the match, soak up the pressure, perhaps get a Barca player sent off, and then look to play the offensive game in the last 15 minutes, and possibly nick a goal. Dangerous tactic, though.
Arguably the one real Barca weakness is in their desire to win back the ball. Those niggly missed tackles can clock up the yellow cards.