SkyDaz Man City Preview

Last updated : 18 August 2005 By Darren Porter

Oh come on! A point away from home on the first day of the season is not a disaster. The tsunami was a disaster. The Titanic was a disaster. Big Brother 6 was a disaster. Anyone one else want to baseball bat that effeminate bunny boiling chimp Craig round the head? Just me then?

Fulham are one of those teams, of which there are around fourteen of them in the Premiership, who are incredibly unpredictable. I pity anyone trying to win enough to follow the England cricket team on their next winter tour.

Apart from the top three who are streets, nay postcodes, ahead of everyone else and the relegation certainties (here goes with the controversy and no one speaking to me for months) Sunderland, Wigan and West Ham the rest can all beat each other. In fact those three are not that controversial a choice. They are just crap. No doubt they will take points off us but that is exactly my point.

One week Fulham will spank Newcastle away and then lose at home to Blackburn. Spurs will surprisingly win at Liverpool and then lose to Wigan. Oh I wish!

So that’s the positive slant on the Fulham game. We earned a point. Away from home. In the rain. With a three o’clock kick off. Not many of those these days. On a Saturday as well!

Last week I bemoaned the lack of firepower and stated that last season if the opposition scored it was rare for even the boldest of Blue noses to predict us scoring two in reply. Saturday emphasised this point. According to the statistics we had two shots on target throughout the ninety minutes. I have since seen alternative findings that had the shot count as high as even three. I wonder if these journalists actually go the game!

Anyway this equates to the simple fact that we only hit the target twice on Saturday against an at best mid-table team. Hypothetically speaking if Fulham had managed to score, our strikers would have had to have a 100% success rate in order for us to win the game. This is simply not good enough. With the likes of Butt, Clemence, Pennant, etc as providers you would expect to see more efforts on goal. The blame does not rest entirely with the strikers who can only fire with the ammunition provided.

Old Steve Bull was a crap footballer. But by God did he know how to score goals. His success story was simple, give him the ball near the box and he shot. Sometimes it went in the stand, sometimes it went into the subway that I used to run through screaming like a big girl when I was being chased by men dressed like wasps and sometimes it went into the back of the net.

I enjoyed the cries of ‘shoot’ every time Clapham got the ball last season. It was humour on a Carry On scale. Perhaps though we should adopt the same shout when any player gets the ball! It might encourage them.

Putting back on my blue tinted glasses though, I don’t know why, I don’t wear any, it was a good point and it was nice to, eventually, see the Premier League table on Saturday night just after the thirty seconds of highlights and note we were halfway. Get used to it!

Manchester City. So good they named it once. Their fans have had it as hard as we have. They have lived in the shadow of a neighbour who have won things (how I curse my neighbour who won the cul-de-sac cribbage league)! The Blue Mooners must wonder what they did in a previous life to deserve the deal they got this summer. I cannot understand how the board got the transfer proposals past the manager. The cunning plan to get rid of Shaun Wright-Phillips and Nicolas Anelka and replace them with Andy Cole and Darius Vassell was genius. I might have a rethink on those relegation candidates after all.

As you would expect from two tribes led by warriors like Pearce and Bruce both defences will be strong and fairly impenetrable. Don’t expect an eight goal thriller. Danny Mills is sure to be at the thick of most battles and I can’t see the bald hot head lasting the full match. The late kick off is due to Sky and their Premiership Plus package. Wouldn’t it be great if Sky released the figures of how many householders paid to watch these games? Imagine Fulham v Blackburn. You wouldn’t even look for the remote control would you?

Keep Right On. How many points in Scrabble for Jarosik?