Forever Blue With Ian Cheeseman: City Show Resilience To Keep Pressure on Arsenal

It looks like Arsenal are real title challengers this season.

My wife said to me, before Sunday’s match at Stamford Bridge, that if the Gunners win at Chelsea they’ll prove they are genuinely in the race to win the Premier League and who am I to question my better half? It’s just such a shame that City fixtures against Tottenham and Arsenal, which should have been in this pre-World Cup part of the season, were postponed. Had they been played, as scheduled, we’d have a much clearer picture of the true nature of the competition still to come.

The Blues came through a self-inflicted mini-crisis against improving Fulham on Saturday, thanks to the second half substitutions that saw Phil Foden replace the enigma, known as Jack Grealish, and the introduction of the unstoppable goal machine Erling Haaland. Cancelo’s crude challenge had resulted in the penalty that saw Fulham draw level and City reduced to ten men. It was a penalty and deserved a red card, in my opinion, though I do understand the frustration of many Blues that similar looking offences by other teams in their Premier League games were dealt with differently.

You probably know that I’m not a fan of VAR but of course the inconsistency of referees has long been an issue in football. That will never change because to err is human. There should be less of an argument for the failings of VAR but that’s another story.

What I have learnt from City’s last three games is that there appears to have been a dip in creativity from the midfield. It seems to have been harder to score for a while now and the team appears to rely more on the goalscoring of Kevin Dev Bruyne and Erling Haaland. Is it a co-incidence that the withdrawal of Jack Grealish has resulted in a big improvement in City’s tempo in the last two games?

I didn’t watch Arsenal’s game at Chelsea on Sunday because I was at Wrexham against Oldham Athletic in the FA Cup. I’d been asked to commentate for the club and I find it hard to resist when I’m offered the chance to describe the action from behind the microphone. In truth I don’t suppose we had many listeners because the match was shown live on ITV but I was thrilled to be back describing the action, which I have always regarded as the best job in the world.

Latics were well beaten in Wales. Hopefully their short-term pain will prove to be a blessing in disguise as they can now focus on gaining stability in the National League. By going to Wrexham, I missed Curzon Ashton’s big day in the FA Cup as they drew with Cambridge United at the Tameside Stadium. I’d have loved to have been there, but you can’t be in two places at once. I with the Nash good luck in their replay.

This week Manchester City play their two remaining games before the “mid-season break” and could yet top the table going into Christmas, but they’ll need a slip up from Arsenal at Wolves on Saturday. Whatever happens this weekend, the Blues will be in the top two as we pull the wishbone around the tree and can look ahead to the challenge of facing RB Leipzig over two legs in the last sixteen of the Champions League.

As I write this, I can’t comment of their prospects in the Carabao Cup but I always look forward to the FA Cup which gets underway, for the big boys in January. We’re now less than a fortnight until the World Cup kicks off in Qatar. It’s unprecedented and doesn’t seem real as I write this, but it is and it’ll be here before you know it!