LondonBlue

i might, but i'm "working from home" so it'll have to wait until tonight. tbh i often skip motd when we don't play well. but i balance that out by rewatching city 2 villa 3

we normally encourage teams to press as we know how to break the press. i think its very early in the season and our game is still a bit raw so that might have worked yesterday. normally we lap that up though. the real danger teams to us are the fast counter teams. and i suspect that the 2 fullbacks pushed into the middle can make us vulnerable in the corners if a team can get there. west ham caused us nightmares last year but those 2 pushed into the middle completely nullified their threat. horses for course though. a fast counter team could easily have poor stats but more goals against us not fact, my opinion.

it might well be a case of the new ground being safer and the new owners improving on that. i will concede that when i would return home to stockport train station in the 90s and get a bus towards manchester, i felt unsafe on the bus, having said that. i now live in croydon and i have felt unsafe in london too. i'm not going to lie, but i genuinely don't recall the Schar penalty call and haven't seen it in any reviews. but then i'm less likely to pay attention to it. so i can't defend it. i did think the first 2 yellows were correct as there was no attempt to play the ball only the man. there was then no yellow for one of our players but i remember thinking the difference was that if you take away the fouled player in the 3 calls the city player would have made contact with the ball, whereas the 2 newcastle ones movement was in a different direction. not long after that it felt like i was watching an old episode of doctor who and had the sofa not been up against a wall thats where i would have watched it from. var calls went your way so that could suggest that the prior onfield calls went our way. it didn't seem that way to me. it seemed like he let a lot of stuff go for both sides.

read a few comments and decided its best not to read any more as i know the mixture you get just after a match. read some on city fans being a nasty lot in years gone by. so a quick comment on that. i had a season ticket as a boy in the 70s and i do remember all the "city aggro" type chants and seeing some stuff and i do remember feeling unsafe walking to the ground. that was then, this is now. i don't remember seeing any violence or feeling unsafe at all in a good 20 years. i moved away to london and couldn't afford football for a long time. i started going again in the late 90s. with all the entertainment that city lay on around the ground it also has a good family atmosphere these days. obviously i'm a home fan there though. also i don't have an ounce of violence in me so maybe i see things differently. i think football is now much more sanitized everywhere. so as a guest on your forum my blue biased view on the game really enjoyed the game. you took the game to us instead of sitting back as so many do. for spells you attacked us with quick counters which is how palace did the double over us last year. we struggled with Zaha's pace - ring any bells? our possession play was lacking its usual cutting edge which i think might be in part due to us trying to adapt from a false 9 to a genuine 9. there was a spell at 3-1 where it could have gone on to be 6-1 we just couldn't figure out a plan until we did. We do tend to hang in there when the going gets tough just look at the last day of last season. I thought trippier should have gone other than that i think the ref did okay in what was a fast paced and exciting game If you guys play like that week in week out, you just might make kevin keegan happy on 2points - style and finishing above our neighbours oh and haaland is now 3 in 3 - adapting finally heard what grealish said about almiron, bit of a dick thing to say. but i do like it when players have personality and say things they shouldn't. sorry but that's my blue spectacled view and i'd rather say it as i felt it than lie to appease you. arsenal at the top are looking all the more impressive this morning.

Except Haaland has to stoop for the balls Shearer leapt for 😉. Bit early to compare but if we're going to go for it this early, Haaland is 2 goals in 2 games. A goal a game, Can't remember Shearers goal per game rate but i'm sure there are 50 odd thousand of you that might.

we're well excited by haaland. proper wet dream potential. and to think we're now signing boyhood city fans. Two in one window to boot (there are pics of Sergio Gomez in old city shirts as a kid too, no idea why but i'll take it) he's a long way of shearer yet. lets revisit this thread in 10 years. Take a note of the day. His champions league record so far outstrips both messi and ronaldo. i mean thats just mad. As Pep might say, we are so so lucky to have him

yes, Laporte was injured for the last few games of last season but we had no one else. those injuries nearly cost use the title and probably did cost us the champions league semi final. soon as the season was done they operated. he's running on grass again now so shouldn't be too long. Ake is 4th choice but is seizing his chance. to be fair he's pretty quick but if he has a worthwhile weakness Howe will know it.

Think Grealish got injured against Bournemouth. He's missed training. Laporte the only other injury i think. Likely be a front three of Foden, Haaland & Mahrez but its a fools game trying to predict Peps teams. He'll look at you guys, before likely picking between Gundo & Silva to partner Kev.

Given that this is the third game of the season, this from Pep might give cause for optimism for you guys... “We cannot forget three seasons ago when Liverpool won the Premier League, we lost five points in the first five games. “Two seasons ago we lost seven points in the first five games and last season we lost five points in the first five games. “Always in this period we drop points, (then) after we make maybe 12, 13, 14 games in a row winning. so that means we're due to drop points against at least one of Newcastle, Palace, Forest, probably two. My money would be on Palace as they did the double on us last season me thinks.

actually it might be worth just singing "loadsa money" type songs and go for banter instead then any result on the pitch will be a bonus lol not sure why i type thing like lol, i'm nearly 60. i see some city fans are surprised that you haven't "gone big" in the transfer market yet. some seem to think it'll take forever with a slowly slowly approach. i went to city v Bournemouth and it was just stupidly hot. had to down a pint of water before my first post match pint, probably should have done before the pre match pints too tbh

you'll get used to it. tbh it takes a while to stop noticing the 40 point barrier. i'll probably lose interest eventually but for now i'm still curious about the takeover. i think uefa pulled up a FFP drawbridge and we just scrambled over before it shut. And uefa have been on us ever since. i'm still dreaming of breaking the 100 point barrier again but as invincibles all the while scoring more than a 100 goals and conceding none. impossible. i would take any sort of a win but would like to see haaland score. i guess i ought to make a prediction. i'll go 3-1 city.

Thought i'd come see how you guys are seeing the Newcastle United v Manchester City match (written in full cos none of us like the abbreviations). I've been on our bluemoon pre match thread and i'd see this post pretty much sums up the feeling "Not going to be a walk in the park but with our extra quality should be enough for the 3 points.". Thats a quote from our forum. My feelings is similar, Eddie is astute so can he come up with a game plan? We're a new beast this year and we don't yet know how it will handle adversity so i reckon you guys should give it a go, but in spells. 90 mins of end to end would play into our hands i think as we've learnt to counter quickly.

Ah, now i see the attraction of Newcastle lol

Paqueta? we have a thread about him on bluemoon. usual stuff about if bernado goes who should we get in. he made that list. last message in his thread was tuesday.

xg's ? i can't really comment too much on how well you'll do although i rate Eddie. you're on the ladder but how long it takes you to climb it i've no idea. the scum will always be up there or thereabouts. the money from their fanbase is just too silly for them to slump for long. their new CB looks tiny though. i would imagine they'll still finish above you but just depends how far they slump and howe quickly you climb. they are the weak link though. all 3 london clubs look better plus us and the bin dipping victims (can i say that?) should cope with our own transitions without too much worry.

not an easy path to tread. what i would like to know is why Chelsea paying 63m for cucurella is seen as a statement of intent, when we overpay we're ruining football etc. we've made 232m in player sales this calendar year. and spent way less. our academy helps massively. where's the city are prudent stories in the media. sorry that belongs on bluemoon really.

it wasn't really a hi-jack. city bid 30m (so maybe we valued him around 40m who knows) but city have a track history of making a valuation then walking away if it becomes clear we'll have to pay more. It will cost us a few deals but there's always another player. Numerous cases, we walked away from 80m for Koulibaly a few years back and got Diaz which worked out ok. Similar for Fred, Sanchez, Maguire over the road. when the price got boosted.

Wasn't his best outing, but his shit is still better than the headless chickens over at the swamp. His pass for Haalands second was none too shabby so should be fun when he gets in his stride...

maybe to Barca and we buy Frenkie De Jong and whilst i'm fantasizing they leave Bernado Silva alone

as a city fan i'm really not comfortable with letting Sterling go. my feeling is that he'll stay and then go abroad for free next summer. thats mostly based on him saying in numerous interviews that he'd quite like to play abroad some day.

the boy likes to party but its nothing new. as long as he keeps it to the close season i've no problems. i think he was quoted as saying something along the lines of enjoying life and play hard party hard etc. Pep himself likes to party when the time is right. have you seen those clips of him smoking cigars and singing wonderwall etc. must admit i preferred the quiet life of David Silva, Aguero, Zabaleta, etc.

Hopefully Ekitike outscores Nunez

fairly sure those other numbers have been hyped up in the same way his clause was up until it was triggered, but don't be surprised that city have got a player in cheap. Bernado Silva 43m, Kevin De Bruyne 54m, Zinchenko 1.7m, Gundogan 21m, Jesus 27m, Alvarez 15m some big fees but no bidding wars. we tend to walk away when the price goes up. Think Sanchez and Fred to man united.

I suspect he followed both. but there are loads of pics out there of him as a little one in city shirts. His dad played for both. I wonder how long we'll see him out on the town with Grealish and Foden.

City sign Haaland but watch the press try and make Nunez sound like the better deal. Haaland costs less, is genuinely a city fan, is younger (just) and has ridiculous stats. whereas Nunez is a nonce (probably)