Manchester City’s squad is slowly but surely returning to full strength; with Wayne Bridge already back in the frame for the Pompey match and with both Joleon Lescott and Patrick Vieira for City’s trip to Hull City next week things on the injury front are looking up. However, Roque Santa Cruz is expected back in late February and Michael Johnson not until May.
Anyway, Kolo Toure the current club captain (hopefully not for long) is available for selection after returning to training with the squad and is expected to partner the awesome Vincent Kompany in the heart of the defence. Emmanuel Adebayor is also expected to return to the starting line-up and I for one am hoping for him to re-visit his early season form; we desperately need someone to lift the goal-scoring burden off Carlitos’ shoulders.
Therefore, he is the line-up I expect Roberto to go for:
City Line-Up:
(4-2-2)
1) Given
–
2) Richards – 28) Toure (c) – 33) Kompany – 15) Garrido
–
8) SWP – 34) de Jong – 18) Barry – 17) Petrov
–
32) Tevez – 25) Adebayor
–
–
And here is the team I would like to see:
City Line-Up:
(4-2-2)
1) Given
–
2) Richards – 28) Toure (c) – 33) Kompany – 15) Garrido
–
8) SWP – 34) de Jong – 7) Ireland – 39) Bellamy
–
32) Tevez – 25) Adebayor
–
–
As for Portsmouth, the crisis-club, they are very thin in terms of options. They have 4 players away at the African Cup of Nations and have Michael Brown, Papa Boupa Diop and Tommy Smith. And add the names Younes Kaboul and Asmir Begovic to the list of absentees as both are on their way out of the revolving exit door at Pompey.
I expect their team to look something like this:
Pompey Line-Up
(4-4-2):
1) James
–
16) Finnan – 35) Wilson – 26) Ben Haim – 7) Hreidarsson
–
17) Utaka – 4) Mokoena – 33) Basinas – 5) O’Hara
–
9) Piquionne – 23) Boateng
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