Manchester City fan Ben Warner who writes for Read Man City gives us his views ahead of the fixture between the Eagles and the Sky Blues under the lights of Selhurst Park on Monday.
This season has been a weird one. You could say they’re always weird with City though. We don’t do anything properly, like other teams would, with our two league titles being evidence of that. Both of those seasons we came from behind late in the season to move ahead of our main challengers before winning it in some dramatic fashion (maybe not so much last season, but definitely in 2012). But despite how weird some seasons can be, this one has been especially odd.
What I mean by that is, we’ve had lots of bits of good form interspersed with lots of stretches of poor form, and that’s been the case since August. For example, we nearly broke our record for most consecutive wins in our history before managing to let slip a 2-0 lead against Burnley in late December to draw the game and lose that run. Then, not that many games later we went on a run of about two-and-a-half months (which seems to have ended in mid-March) of barely winning games, but the games we did manage to win were big wins – see the large margins of victory against Newcastle and Stoke.
Thankfully, we look like we’re moving out of our latest patch of bad form, and at just the right time too, with some huge games and some huge stakes in the last 6 weeks or so of the season. My thinking is that Pellegrini needs to secure at least third to keep his job, maybe even second, which means we can’t afford to not be winning games like Monday night’s (although it would be typical of us to do just that).
Our away form this season has been very mixed, so much so that it’s difficult to make conclusions looking back on the list of fixtures. We’ve had some spectacular results, such as the win against AS Roma away (in the Champions League) that secured us progression to the knockout stages, as well as some very good results domestically too. We’ve struggled at The Stadium of Light and at the Britannia for years now, but this season we managed to beat both of Sunderland and Stoke away, in December and February respectively.
Equally, we’ve had some extremely poor results on the road. Burnley, Liverpool, West Ham and Everton all spring to mind, either because of the position we were in or because of the performances we’ve seen from various players. This makes it very difficult to know what to expect going into any given away game, simply because you can never predict which City is going to turn up.
In terms of Monday night, I’m pleased to be going into the game with a fully-fit (I think) squad. I always get nervous about playing teams like Palace away because of the ‘typical City’ mentality, but to be going into the game with everyone available is pleasing, especially when I’ve come to get used to the ever-mounting injury problems we always seem to have, usually involving Aguero or Kompany or any number of other players.
Of that fully-fit squad, there’s some players Alan Pardew probably needs to watch out for. David Silva has looked one of our sharper players recently, and he could very well perform again on Monday night. Another to watch out is Wilfried Bony, who wants to prove that he’s good enough to be at the club, and scored his first goal in the last game against West Brom. However, he could be outshone by Sergio Aguero who is doubtless frustrated at his erratic form in the past few months, since he picked up an injury in December which kept him out for a while.
I feel like the players will be especially motivated going into Monday’s form, knowing that the extra-crucial Manchester derby is coming up just six days later. We’ve not won away for nearly two months (since that 4-1 win against Stoke at the Britannia in mid-February) and what we don’t want to be doing is going to a buoyant Old Trafford on poor form. That’s a recipe for disaster if ever I saw one.
However, a win on Monday could just give us that bit of a boost that we need going into Sunday’s derby, and may just push us that bit further. So in that sense, not only is Monday’s fixture at Selhurst Park a vital one for our second-place charge, but also in terms of winning the derby.
Fingers crossed.
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