City are back in Champions League action on Tuesday, with Barcelona paying a visit to Manchester for the second time in a year, having been drawn against us at the same stage last season – some might cry conspiracy.
Of course, very few City fans need reminding about last season’s games against Barcelona, which were incidentally the first games we’d played in the Champions League past the group stages. The La Liga side came to Manchester for the first leg again last year, and left with a 2-0 win thanks to Lionel Messi and Dani Alves. Weeks later, we travelled to Catalonia for the second leg and again lost, 2-1, with Messi and Alves again scoring for Barcelona. Kompany nicked a late consolation for City.
City have never managed to beat Barcelona in a competitive game (partly due to only ever playing 2 competitive matches against them, both last season), but it’s only six years since we beat them in a friendly at the Nou Camp to win the Joan Gamper trophy. That day, in front of 90000 fans in eastern Spain, Martin Petrov was the hero for City as he scored the only goal of a 1-0 victory, whilst Shay Given kept out Lionel Messi and Zlatan Ibrahimović at the other end. Also in the Barcelona side that day was none other than Yaya Touré, a year before he moved to Manchester.
In fact, in the 6 non-competitive games we’ve played against Barcelona since the first one in 1952, we’ve managed to win three of the games, with the first one coming in 1986, in the semi-final of the Torneig Colombino which City win after a 1-1 draw with Barcelona, after which The Blues won on penalties.
Ahead of Barcelona’s visit to England, City have very few absentees to concern themselves with. James Milner could miss out after he picked up an injury last week that kept him out of the Newcastle game, and Yaya Touré is also missing as he serves the final match of the ban he got for the red card he got against CSKA Moscow in the group stages. Other than that, all players are available.
We’re likely to see Wilfried Bony start up front next to Sergio Agüero for his starting debut after he got half an hour against Newcastle on Saturday. We’re also almost certain to see either Fernando or Frank Lampard partnering Fernandinho in the middle of midfield, and Lampard’s superior passing ability might give him the edge over Fernando.
In the Barcelona camp, they also have very few players absent. They were able to name an almost full-strength squad, with Douglas and Thomas Vermalaen the only definite absentees. There are also reports Neymar could be set to miss out, although he has travelled with the squad to England and nothing is confirmed.
This tie is being labelled as a “sequel” by the people in charge of marketing at City, but the City players will surely want to put all memory of last year’s games against Barça out of their minds going into what will be two very tough fixtures. Barcelona are obviously favourites, but over the past couple of weeks City have shown signs of returning to their footballing best, with some of the football in the 5-0 win over Newcastle being excellent. Every blue fan inside Eastlands – and thousands more who aren’t there – will be hoping we can channel some of that excellence into getting a good result against the La Liga title chasers; a result that allows us to go into the return leg with a certain level of confidence.
