Tuesday, March 1, 2011

CITY v Villa (Preview)

Manchester City will be hoping to put the disappointment of Sundays draw with the FA Cup fifth round tie with Aston Villa at Eastlands tomorrow. City beat Villa in the league fixture earlier on in the season but the Villans have improved somewhat since that game after the appointment of Gerard Houllier as manager and
City fans will not need reminding of their new striker, Darren Bent scoring on his debut, against City. Again City will be without DeJong, Johnson, Given and Vincent Kompany although David Silva and Micah Richards may return to the squad as City pursue their first silverware since 1976. This will probably be the best route for City to progress to the final as some really big teams have already fallen by the way side and with Reading knocking out Everton yesterday that means we will face the Championship side on Sunday March 13th if we brush aside Villa.
Manchester City have the edge with our encounters with Aston Villa in the FA Cup with Villa last knocking us out in the Quarter Final stage in the 1938 season. The most recent meeting saw us win 2-1 in the replay at Eastlands. However as we all know, stats mean nothing and this could be a make or break game for Mancini with the Premiership title already out of our reach a defeat in the FA Cup will leave a very tough group of teams left in the Europa League for us to get past, if we beat Kiev.

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