Villa Park happy hunting ground for City

The FA Community Shield returns to Villa Park for the first time since 1972 when, as luck with have it, Manchester City beat Aston Villa thanks to a Francis Lee penalty kick.

City features in this year`s Villa Park curtain raiser to the English football season and, judging by the respective form of it and its FA Community Shield opponent Chelsea, the Manchester club looks likely to lift aloft the trophy.

Since winning its first English top-flight title in 44 years on a thrilling final day of the 2011-2012 season, City has been relatively quiet in the transfer market, with Roberto Mancini focusing on holding on to the players that he has.

Stability is the new buzzword around the City of Manchester Stadium and, even though Mancini`s men have not been at full strength for their pre-season matches, they have produced some excellent results, including 2-0 victories over Turkey`s Besiktas, Germany`s Wolfsburg and Arsenal.

It was a half-strength City side that lost 1-2 to Oldham so that scoreline should not deter punters from backing the English Premier League champion, particularly as Chelsea does not have the same excuse for its pre-season flops.

London`s Blues lost 0-1 to Italy`s Milan and much, much more worryingly 1-3 to English Championship team Brighton, the upwardly mobile seaside club managed astutely by one of Stamford Bridge`s favourite foreign sons, Gus Poyet.

It was a full-strength Chelsea side featuring John Terry, Fernando Torres and new signing Eden Hazard that lost on the south coast despite Frank Lampard putting the UEFA Champions League winner ahead 11 minutes before the interval.

There was no pressure on Roberto Di Matteo last term but the former Blues midfielder is going to find life different this season now that he has spent some of Roman Abramovich`s cash and the team is not just the one that he inherited.

Chelsea is going to take some time to gel, if Di Matteo`s expensively acquired players gel at all. The success that the Stamford Bridge club enjoyed in the second half of last term was as a result of two things: the manager getting his side`s senior statesmen to pull out their fingers and what can only be described as healthy slices of good fortune.

Those senior statesmen are either a year older or no longer on Chelsea`s books, while the luck that helped the Blues eliminate Barcelona and Bayern Munchen from the UEFA Champions League knockout phase cannot repeat itself.

A whopping 25 points separated first-placed City and six-placed Chelsea at the end of last season`s English Premier League campaign and it is no certainty that the difference will be any narrower in May 2013.

City has the potential to go from strength to strength now that Mancini`s system is bedded down and the Carlos Tevez matter is ancient history. The Argentine striker seems to have buried the hatchet with Mancini and vice versa.

Chelsea, on the other hand, could go backwards instead of forwards. It all depends on how Di Matteo manages the tricky transitional phase into which the Blues are heading with so many of their key players - Petr Cech, Ashley Cole, Florent Malouda, Terry and Lampard to name just five - in their 30s.

The FA Community Shield is a glorified friendly so keep stakes low if you do have a bet, with City representing reasonable value at around 5-4 to win in normal time.

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10/08/2012     © Frixo 2024