CITY failed their Spanish inquisition but as far as
Sven-Goran Eriksson is concerned, their pre-season ended on a positive note.A
10th minute goal from Silva, courtesy of mistakes from Gelson Fernandes and
Kasper Schmeichel, was enough to see the Thomas Cook Trophy winging its way back
to the Costa del Azahar.The Blues did hit the bar twice but were never able to
dominate the Champions League hopefuls who left their superstar David Villa on
the bench.Even so Eriksson was far from downcast."We matched Valencia, one of
the best teams in Europe. I thought we played as well as they did and created
more chances than them," he observed though the pace of the game was hardly that
of a full-blooded encounter."We had five new players out there, two of them have
not played for us at all in pre-season and don't speak English, so if you take
that into consideration then it was good."
-MEN match report.
I was away cricketing at the weekend so wasn't at the game but from media reports and (probably more accurately) first-hand reports from people I know who went it suggested that it was very much as expected with it being a bit hit and miss with the side having barely played together at all, so the overall result is far less important than the fact the players had (albeit brief) time to gel.
A shame we haven't got another pre-season coming up this midweek to give futher opportunity prior to the opening day game at West Ham - perhaps one plus being that they are also a side who have picked up a fair amount of new players close to the start of the season.
Looking round on YouTube, it seems DPercussion wasn't the only succesful event held in the city last Saturday: