mancityblues.com

Three tough games over Christmas, Stoke at home, WBA away and Sunderland away. Sunderland having at last got rid of Steve Bruce, it will be interesting to see how they are set up. First up though; a trip to the Britannia. The injury to Aleks Kolarov has one or two City fans quietly happy, as his defensive expertise is easily outweighed by his attacking prowess, shall we say. I don't know if the apparent injuries to Micah and Aguero against Arsenal will allow for their appearance, perhaps they may start on the bench. Clichy has impressed since his arrival and Zaba did an excellent job at LB against Arsenal, keeping in check, so we can expect the LB position to remain unchanged. Stoke are well known to be strong in attack and defence, with Crouch and Etherington both playing well at the moment, so we hope we can rely on Vinnie K, with Micah and Kolo Toure probably, keeping those two out. It looks as though Ryan Shawcross is suspended for this game. We have to hope that Joe isn't nearly so busy as he was against Arsenal. Of course, it may be necessary to rotate one or two players over the Christmas period, but I would want to get as much out of Yaya as possible before the Africa nonsense.

Strength in midfield will be key to this game, as ever, so I would include Nigel DeJong and Gareth Barry in midfield to support the silky skills of Aguero and Silva to terrorise the Stoke defence; with equally silky (except in the tackle) Balotelli fronting the attack. Every team in the League wants to see Mario sent off, but we want to see him playing as much as possible, learning as much as possible. He's always worth the risk, he can turn on a sixpence and win the game for us at any moment, I for one hate to see him on the bench as much as he hates to sit there. He also needs to win games and score goals to keep him happy - if Mario's happy we are all happy!

So here's my team, injuries allowing;

----------------------Hart---------------------------
Richards(or Zaba)--Kolo--Kompany--Zabaleta(or Clichy)
-----------DeJong-----------------Barry----------------
-----Silva-----------Yaya----------Nasri(or Aguero)----
-------------------Balotelli-----------------------------

It's great to see the team working together as they were against Arsenal, it was clear they were determined to keep a clean sheet - Joe Hart especially. As the old saying goes, if you don't concede any goals, you can't lose.

CLEVBLUE