Ian Cheeseman: Forever Blue

Saturday’s game against Liverpool was fascinating, from where I sit in the Colin Bell Stand.

It was a game that could have gone either way and ended up being a draw, which I think was probably a fair result. City had more and clearer chances, but you have to score them if you’re going to win. The amazing Erling Haaland, who has now reached fifty Premier League goals from his first forty-eight appearances, missed more that he scored.

City create so many chances that his relatively high percentage of misses don’t usually matter and he certainly wasn’t the only one that couldn’t find the back of the Liverpool net when in good goal scoring positions. Liverpool had their chances too, but City really should have taken full advantage of their dominance, particularly in the first half.

At Chelsea, before the International break, City had scored four and it was their defending that wasn’t quite up to scratch. I actually think that the problem, if City have one, is not up front or at the back. Pep Guardiola’s team is designed to dominate possession and would normally only be vulnerable to teams with an exceptional counter attack. Wolves exploited that weakness and so did Arsenal, to a certain extent.

Last season, City’s dominance in midfield was more overwhelming, with Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne, Rodri and John Stones being the key players. In the three games that the overstretched Rodri has missed this season, through suspension, the Blues went out of the League Cup and lost at Wolves and Arsenal. In the other two big games, since then, they’ve drawn games that they won last season, against Liverpool and Chelsea. Only Rodri from that key midfield quartet, from last season, played in those fixtures.

It’s fair to say that recent history suggests that City get stronger as the season goes on and hopefully both De Bruyne and Stones will be fully fit throughout the second half of the campaign, which should make all the difference. Once City are back to total dominance in midfield, the defence will be able to better deal with the occasional opposition counter attacks and it won’t matter if Haaland, and others, miss a few because there’ll always be another chance coming along very soon.

Hopefully City’s summer signings Matheus Nunes and Mateo Kovacic will get fully “up to speed” as the season progresses to match the immediate impact of the exciting Jeremy Doku, who has fast become City’s most creative and dangerous player.

Next up for City, in the Premier League, is Tottenham at the Etihad Stadium. Last season the Blues beat them 4-2 and they need to reproduce that sort of performance after those two successive draws.

I’m writing this column before Tuesday’s Champions League game against RB Leipzig, but with City already guaranteed passage into the last sixteen they are only jockeying for top spot in the group which results in home advantage in the last sixteen and in theory weaker opposition.

The more significant event on Tuesday, in my opinion, is the unveiling of the long-awaited statues of Bell, Lee and Summerbee which will be there for all to see before the game. You may know that I was the ghost writer of Colin Bell’s autobiography, Reluctant Hero, and we became close friends as a result of the project. Although he would never have said it to anyone else, I know he was disappointed by the plaster statue of him, that was in reception at City for a while. It looked more like Ian Mellor. I reckon they got their pictures mixed up.

His son Jon will be very proud of the new statue, which I know he approves of. Sadly Francis Lee, just like Colin, passed too early to see it. I spoke to Mike Summerbee on Saturday and his big regret was that his two friends wouldn’t be there like him to see it on Tuesday. I’ll certainly never forget those three greats and their team mates because I know they agreed with me that It’s Great to be a Blue!