Thursday 3 September 2009

Dixon praises Barry

There's a very interesting article by Match of the Day pundit and City fan Lee Dixon on the BBC website, about our performance at Fratton Park. He picks Gareth Barry out for particular praise:

But the victory at Fratton Park, while not a perfect performance by any means, showed the importance of having a strong, disciplined midfielder in Barry.

The Englishman was all over the park on Sunday - right-back, left-back, covering the back four at all times. That meant that when City's forwards lost the ball, the defence was not exposed like they were at times last season.

That balance is the vital difference for any side, and City are fortunate to have snapped up a player in Barry who I believe would strengthen any of the top four teams in the league.

He also compares our fluidity of attacking movement to that of Dixon's former club:

At Fratton Park, they employed Emmanuel Adebayor as the key frontman, with Carlos Tevez, Bellamy, Wright-Phillips and Ireland supporting and inter-changing behind.

There's something Arsenal-esque about City this season. All the forwards swap positions, drift wide, drop deep, as well as burst behind the defence. They have a similar fluidity and movement - even if they are not quite up to Arsenal's standards on that front just yet.

The whole article is positive and worth reading.

2 comments:

jackblue said...

Since he is a life long City supporter I would expect nothing else of Lee lol

Blue Phoenix - Moving on up! said...

Actually you have to say he is always in the money. I think tells it how it is and has done on many occasions in the past with City on MOTD.

The balance is certainly looking better and I think it will be a lot harder to spot our weaknesses. Before the MH era you could spot weaknesses all over the place and thankfully quite a few gaps have been plugged and we shouldn't leak to many goals this season.

It may take a few months for the whole team to gel especially up front but we'll certainly be challenging very soon. Certain top 6 for me, 60% chance of top 5, 30% chance of top 4 and 10% chance of anything higher such is the tightness with results up there.

Moving on up people!