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| Benitez and Mancini face off again for the first time in over 4 years (Courtesy of Ines11thiago and thesportreview - Flickr) |
The game
tomorrow is possibly the biggest Big Game of the season so far. Rafa Benitez and Roberto Mancini square off for the first time since 2008 when Benitez's Liverpool side completed a last-16 victory over Mancini's Inter with a 1-0 win in Milan. Chelsea are on
a terrible run but they’ve got a new manager to try out and often a breath of
fresh air can do a struggling club a lot of good. However you get the feeling
that following their Champions League win least season Roberto Di Matteo was
quite popular with the players, certainly more popular than Andre Villas-Boas
whom Di Matteo replaced, so Benitez’s appointment might not have the cathartic
effect that Abramovich is hoping for. Not only do Chelsea have internal
problems but they are facing a Manchester City team who are still unbeaten in
the league and are smarting from being knocked out of the Champions League.
Should make for an extremely tense contest.
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| Torres will hope that meeting up with old boss Benitez will coincide with a return to form. (Courtesy of Ben Sutherland) |
All focus,
of course, will be on Rafa Benitez, who was a surprise appointment. Don’t get
me wrong, his managerial record is good; he won La Liga twice and the Uefa Cup
with Valencia and formulated a very strong Liverpool team which managed to come
very close to beating United to the title in 2009. But his most recent
managerial travails saw him struggle at Inter Milan despite inheriting a
treble-winning team from Jose Mourinho. No doubt his good relationship with
struggling striker Fernando Torres was a major factor as Abramovich continues
to try and make his £50m man a success. Another strange decision by the main man was to
hire an ‘interim manager.’ It insinuates either that Benitez is not Abramovich’s
first choice, or that he is but Abramovich wants to be able to get rid of him
if he doesn’t perform up to expectations. Hiring Di Matteo as an interim
manager had made sense last season, it happened in March and Di Matteo had been
assistant manager at the time. In November you would think he’d want to hire
someone to turn the season around, not to see the season out, as ‘interim’
suggests. Anyway, enough about the managerial problems and more on Chelsea’s
chances tomorrow. It is unlikely that Benitez will have made any real
impression since his appointment so he’ll most likely be sticking to the old
system we saw of 4-2-3-1, with Oscar, Hazard and Mata all supporting Torres. The
statistics are stacked in Chelsea’s favour; The Blues have won 6 of their last
7 home encounters with City and Benitez is unbeaten in his last 10 against The
Citizens. But we shouldn’t forget that the past usually counts for sod all, so
you can disregard all that. As stupid as it sounds, I don’t think tomorrow will
be that important for Chelsea, sure 3 points would be nice and it would be good
for the confidence, but more important will be if Chelsea can put together a decent run in the games following this one,
against Fulham, West Ham and Sunderland.
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| Kompany will be key for City if he can return from injury in time (Courtesy of illarterate) |
To win this
game Mancini will have to forget that there is a new manager and possibly a new
Chelsea to the one he had been preparing for. City have been playing perfectly
well in the league to be able to forgo over-preparing the opposition and just
focus on their own game. After all they are the only team in the English
Football League to still have an unbeaten record and their last game, a 5-0
victory over Aston Villa, was a professional demolition job. Twin that with the
fact that they are facing a team in transition and low on confidence and City
will have very high hopes going into tomorrow’s game, especially if captain
fantastic Vincent Kompany is back in time from his knee injury. Mancini has
claimed that his team’s exit from the Champions League will benefit them in the
Premier League season, which in my opinion is more of an attempt at a
self-fulfilling prophecy than a real belief. Not least because Chelsea, one of
their main rivals for the title, also look likely to exit before Christmas.
However having less games can only do them good. Tomorrow City will undoubtedly
rely on their defence as they have only managed to score 7 goals in their 5
away games this season but have only conceded a very impressive 5, which is
joint best in the league. In his last away game Mancini fielded three strikers
and still only managed a 0-0 draw, against West Ham, but you shouldn’t expect
him to be quite so attacking tomorrow and he might even look to play a 4-4-2,
although with 3 strikers all playing very well AND Mario Balotelli he will be
hard-pressed to choose between them.
Verdict
City may
well be unbeaten in the league so far but their atrocious performances in
Europe have proven that when it comes to the big occasion they have the
unfortunate knack of crumbling. As for Chelsea, first games for a new manager
are always impossible to predict, but I’m going to put my faith in the power of
a new appointment, something that so often makes a big difference, and say that
Chelsea will pull themselves together and give Manchester City their first
defeat of the season. 2-1
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