The way I see it - Manchester City v Arsenal

Last updated : 01 February 2008 By Jason Hogan
Thanks to my old mate Gus and the enforced absence of his son, Tom, I was at The Grove to watch both games and it's fair to say that our performances in both games were solid and workmanlike rather than spectacular.

What both games did show was the growing influence Adebayor is bringing to bear on the Arsenal side right now. The lad has come on leaps and bounds in the last few months and as someone who has stuck by him at times when a lot of other Gooners have been having a pop at him, it gladdens my heart no end to see his stock continuing to rise.

I've also been pleased with the improvement in Eduardo's game in the last couple of weeks. True, he hasn't scored in the last few games but there have been definite signs that his all round game is improving and that he is starting to feel like a fully integrated member of the team now.

The biggest highlight for me across the two games with Newcastle has to be Flamini's goal in Tuesday's game. What made it all the more remarkable was the fact that he almost literally hit the corner flag with a shot a few minutes earlier (albeit with his left foot) but, if I close my eyes, I can still see visions of his shot whistling into the top corner past a helpless Given even now.

It was bloody marvellous and it was easily the most spectacular goal I have seen us score live at The Grove this season and it was no more than the boy deserved after putting in what virtually everyone considered to be a five-star performance on the night.

The word on the street is that Juve are waiting in the wings to snap Flamini up should he fail to sign a new deal at The Grove. Well, if the boy has got any sense he will put pen to paper and stay at the Arsenal. Because Juve may be a great club, of that there is no doubt. But Flamini would only find himself back at square one if he went there. He would not play regularly and become a victim of a rotational system. That, to me, is not the boy really needs right now.

As a consequence of seeing off the Magpies in the cup we were paired with ManUre in the next round of the cup, weren't we? What was my reaction to that, fellow Gooners? Well, I'll tell you what I told my other buddy Gazza when he phoned at work after the draw took place; Arsene has said all season long that he has a bunch of hungry players on his hands at the club. Well, this is the kind of tie that is going to test that hunger out, isn't it?

Am I fearful of the tie, am I filled with a sense of trepidation about us going up there and playing them in their back yard? Hell no!! I always relish it when we play those bastards because whenever we play them I always see it as an opportunity to put Ferguson's purple nose right out of joint and blow a further hole in the myth that both Ferguson and his God forsaken club are not the be all and end all that most of the British press and media make them out to be.

Now, I think it's time to look forward to Saturday's trip to Eastlands where Arsenal have a lunchtime date with the club that really represents the natives of the city of Manchester and all that is decent about it, namely Manchester City.

It's hard to say that City have had anything less than a really exciting season so far. There's a vibrancy about the club right now that hasn't really been there since perhaps the seventies and the early eighties and it has largely come about thanks to a native of Thailand and a much maligned Swede that happened to be head coach of England once upon a time.

When all the little Englanders across the nation were up in arms over the appointment of Sven Goran Eriksson back in 2001 as England coach, I was one of the few that genuinely welcomed his appointment.

As the old saying goes you don't know what you've got until it's gone and England found that out in the last major qualifying campaign when they decided to revert back to an English coach and failed to qualify for Euro 2008.
Now, I'm not saying that Sven didn't have his faults or that he is doesn't continue to have them. But at least he never failed to get England through to a major tournament. And in the light of the fiasco that ensued in Steve McClaren's reign, well, Sven was a qualified success as England manager in comparison.

What Sven has shown throughout his career in club management is that he is able to improve the fortunes of clubs particularly if he has a little bit of money on the hip to do so.

His time at Lazio was a prime example of that when he led the Romans not only to the Scudetto in 2000, their first in 26 years and only their second in their history overall, but the Italian equivalent of The Double by winning the Coppa Italia in the same season as well. Though to be fair to him, he has had some success on budget also. He led the relatively unfashionable IFK Gothenburg the UEFA Cup back in 1982.

In other words, no matter what people say about him as a person or what he gets up to in his private life, the fact is that he a man that has a proven ability to make things happen at clubs if the working conditions are right and, fuelled no doubt by a desire to prove his knockers in England wrong, he is now moving City steadily in the right direction.

Sven wasn't too happy last weekend though as his City team crashed out of the FA Cup to Sheffield United at Bramall Lane and to be fair I cannot say I blame him.

Watching that game myself, I thought that City were a little disappointing particularly after they had got themselves back into the game having been 2-0 down at the break. I expected them to kick on and really put the Blades to the sword (no pun intended) after that.

It didn't happen that way and they were fortunate that the defeat wasn't perhaps more emphatic considering the chances United had on the break to finish the game off.

Micah Richards was missing at Bramall Lane for City on Sunday but for me, I think they were really missing the lad Michael Johnson in midfield. He has been out of circulation for a while now with an abdominal problem and he remains on the sidelines as a result of this. But I am a big fan of this lad and I think he genuinely gives the City side an extra edge.

There are other reasons why I feel City have gone off the boil a little of late. Having watched Elano both against the Blades and against the Hammers in recent weeks, I feel that his first season in the Premier League caught up with him a little. The same could be said of Martin Petrov as well as he hasn't been quite himself in recent weeks.

Both men are too good to be written off indefinitely though, least of all by me. Form is temporary, class is permanent so the story goes and neither Petrov nor Elano are not particularly lacking in that department.

Perhaps the biggest threat to us on Saturday comes in the shape of young Daniel Sturridge. For those of you that don't know him, he is the 18 year old nephew of former Derby striker, Dean Sturridge.

People in the game have been whispering about this lad since he was 15 and I have to say I like the look of this lad as a player. In fact, there was part of me that honestly wasn't in the least surprised that he scored for City after coming on as a sub on Sunday. That's how exciting I think this lad is.

This kid really is a young fellow to watch out for I believe. And with the likes of Richards and Johnson already with him at City, I think that Sturridge has the potential to be the extra piece of vertebrae to what could be a very exciting spine running through the City side in the years to come.

I must admit that I have been looking forward to this match for quite a while purely because it throws up a sense of intrigue in my mind. When Liverpool came to visit recently Sven adopted a 4-5-1 formation and a generally conservative approach.

I think that he might send City out against with the same kind of tactics to start with but even though the system might be the same, I don't think City will be as conservative as they were for example at home to Liverpool recently.

Liverpool generally adopt a more functional, dour approach to the game whereas the general, and indeed genuine, attacking nature of Arsenal means that we will occasionally offer up a chance to the opposition of nicking a goal against us and I think that Eriksson will send his City side out with that in mind. They will try to nick the ball off us as early as they can and vigorously attack our back four at pace whenever they can from there.

Whilst it's fair to say that City are not quite firing on all cylinders at the minute, the Arsenal should be going into the game with good heart and with renewed confidence.

As I said earlier though, we were workmanlike in the two games against Newcastle and maybe that kind of ethic will perhaps serve us best if we are going to win at Eastlands this Saturday.