Sep 10

Squad sheets: Manchester City v Blackburn Rovers

Manchester City could be without £80m worth of attackers and it is another embarrassment for Roque Santa Cruz, in the week he was left out of their Europa League squad in favour of the academy graduate Shaleum Logan, that Roberto Mancini is so reluctant to draft him in against his former club, even when Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor and Mario Balotelli could all be missing. Instead, Jô is being primed for his first league start for City in almost two years, whereas Blackburn’s manager, Sam Allardyce, may give Benjani Mwaruwari, another of English football’s forgotten men, a debut against his old team. Daniel Taylor

Venue City of Manchester Stadium, Saturday 3pm

Tickets Sold out

Last season Manchester City 4 Blackburn 1

Referee M Clattenburg

This season’s matches 2 Y4, R0, 2.00 cards per game

Odds Manchester City 4-11 Blackburn 10-1 Draw 4-1

Manchester City

Subs from Given, Tevez, Richards, Boyata, Vieira, Silva, Ibrahim, Vidal, Wright-Phillips, Cunningham, Santa Cruz

Doubtful De Jong (ankle), Tevez (calf)

Injured Adebayor (hamstring, 19 Sep), Boateng (knee, 19 Sep), Bridge (foot, 17 Oct), M Johnson (knee, 17 Oct), Kolarov (knee, 17 Oct), Balotelli (knee, 24 Oct)

Suspended None

Form guide LWD

Disciplinary record Y6 R0

Leading scorer Tevez 2

Blackburn

Subs from Brown, Bunn, Fielding, Benjani, Nzonzi, Olsson, Chimbonda, Emerton, Roberts, Hoilett, Dunn, Gunning, Doran

Doubtful Olsson (shoulder)

Injured Andrews (groin, 25 Sep)

Suspended None

Form guide LLW

Disciplinary record Y6 R0

Leading scorers MB Diouf, Kalinic, Nzonzi 1

Match pointers

• City have won three of their 12 Premier League home games with Blackburn, drawing six times

• If selected, Gaël Givet will be playing on the day after his 29th birthday

• City have found a team-mate with one out of 34 crosses attempted from open play this season

• Blackburn have accumulated 899 points since the Premier League began in 1992

• Emmanuel Adebayor has scored six goals in five Premier League starts against Blackburn while Carlos Tevez has five from four

Premier LeagueManchester CityBlackburn Roversguardian.co.uk

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Aug 29

Wenger hails Arsenal’s returning ‘leader’ Fábregas after Blackburn win

Theo Walcott’s crisp finishing quite rightly dominated post-match discussions after Arsenal safely negotiated their trip to bandit country, or at least the part of the world where football sometimes resembles rugby, though Arsène Wenger seemed to attach greater significance to the contribution Cesc Fábregas made in his first start of the season.

The Arsenal captain looked slightly surprised to be withdrawn after 68 minutes, not long after helping to create his side’s winning goal, but his manager is determined to get the best out of him over the course of a whole season. “He didn’t know he would be coming off before the end, but that was his first appearance since the World Cup final,” Wenger said.

“As long as we look after him I don’t think there will be any problems in getting him back to the player he was before. I don’t think he is the type to give anything less than his best, just because he didn’t get a move. He may have wanted to join Barcelona but he loves Arsenal as well, and that’s why he made his decision. I am happy because you always want to keep your best players and it was vital for us to keep Cesc. There is a trust and confidence on both sides. He has given enough to the club and the club has given a lot to him in return.”

Wenger is well aware that Javier Mascherano has just ruthlessly engineered his own move to Barcelona by effectively refusing to continue playing for Liverpool, but he has no fears Fábregas would try to do the same. “I don’t know everything about the Liverpool situation, maybe there was a financial problem, but I do know it is difficult to legislate once a player says he is unhappy at a club. But Cesc has not said that. He is still our leader and I am looking forward to having him back.”

If Arsenal were not quite at their free-flowing best at Ewood, that was due in part to Blackburn’s wholly legitimate tenacity. The home side rallied after Walcott’s opening goal and managed to finish the first half on top, though Sam Allardyce was willing to concede that Arsenal were a superior side. “You know when you play them that you have to take your opportunities to get your nose in front,” he said. “Because if you don’t you only need switch off for a split second and they will punish you.”

Blackburn did switch off momentarily in letting Bacary Sagna escape down the right to set up Arsenal’s winner. Fábregas’s shot came back off Walcott for Andrey Arshavin to beat Paul Robinson to the rebound, though not even Allardyce could bring himself to point the finger at his defence for the first goal. “I wouldn’t necessarily want to blame my defenders because I’m not sure what they could have done to deal with such accurate first time passing,” he said. “When you have that sort of quality it is very hard to stop.”

Blackburn’s only hope, once Robin van

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Aug 20

Mad world of the Premier League – where even Big Brother seems sane | David Lacey

As Blackpool have discovered, top-flight football is more overblown than Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth ever was

Ian Holloway has quickly concluded that the Premier League is not all there. After his newly-promoted Blackpool team had won 4-0 at Wigan he interrupted the ensuing fuss to declare that “it’s the maddest world I’ve ever known”, adding that he did not understand why everything had suddenly become so important. “It’s like being in Big Brother. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Clearly it is not the Premier League Holloway experienced as a midfielder with Queens Park Rangers in the 90s. Then, people just got a bit worked up from time to time. Now football conducts its business, on and off the field, in an atmosphere of constant hysteria compared to which a day in the Big Brother house is about as fraught as an average Sunday at the vicarage.

Blackpool have soon caught the mood. Already the club’s chairman, Karl Oyston, has resigned having previously condemned the activities of some agents as he tried to sign players to strengthen the squad. “I expected the landscape to be a lot different and the way that people behaved to be a lot different,” he said. No Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.

As to mad worlds, the Premier League does seem determined to exist on another planet. How sane is it, for example, that one of the reasons for writing off Blackpool’s chances of staying up, apart from the fact that they will not be playing Wigan every Saturday, is their insistence that none of their players will be paid more than £10,000 a week. Makes sense. No point in bankrupting the club in a probably vain attempt to buy safety. Only in the Premier League would this be regarded as a pauper’s wage, which says more about the league than it does about Blackpool.

And still the foreign tycoons march on into English football’s hinterland. Ahsan Ali Syed, a Bahrain-based Indian billionaire, is willing to pay £300m for Blackburn (the football club, not the town) and is already talking about another Real Madrid at Ewood Park. If everyone who has wanted to recreate Real in England actually did so the Premier League would now be up to its eyes in all-white lookalikes, but somehow it never seems to happen.

Blackburn supporters would probably settle for revisiting the Rovers of the mid-90s. Syed is ready to give Sam Allardyce £100m to spend, which might send a tremor of anticipation through Africa but would hardly be enough to buy any reincarnations of Alan Shearer, Chris Sutton or Colin Hendry who had not already been signed by Manchester City.

Sir Alex Ferguson did not mention City this week when he talked about the “kamikaze” spending of some Premier League clubs and only time will decide whether or not they fit the bill.

Should City score a few hits on the flight deck of Old Trafford’s ambitions they will be able to boast of squillions well spent. The value for money of a transfer fee, great or small, can only be judged in retrospect.

The £3.5m Fergie paid Nantes for Eric Djemba-Djemba in the summer of 2003 seems trifling now but appeared an extravagance then once the Cameroon midfielder showed what he could, or rather couldn’t, do.

Ferguson has raised a few eyebrows, critical eyebrows, by admitting that he had signed a young Portuguese striker, Bébé, from Vitória Guimarães for £7.4m without having seen him play. What could the Manchester United manager be thinking of? Actually he was trusting his scouting system, much as Bill Shankly kept faith with his Liverpool spies when he bought a 20-year-old midfielder from Scunthorpe in 1971, sight unseen. Some bloke called Kevin Keegan.

Holloway wonders why every triviality has become so important. Part of it is due to the Premier League’s success in selling itself, helped by Sky’s big drum. Nothing wrong with that. Phineas T Barnum did not get where he was by placing small ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the same time it is hard to avoid the feeling that football really isstarting to share Shankly’s belief that it is more important a matter than life or death.

Blackpool could do worse than remind the game of a time 71 years ago when they led the league after winning their opening three matches, against Huddersfield, Brentford and Wolves. Sheffield United and Arsenal were a point behind, Liverpool one further back. An intriguing season lay ahead. Then Hitler invaded Poland.

BlackpoolBlackburn RoversPremier LeagueDavid Laceyguardian.co.uk

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