MANCHESTER City are no longer playing Blackpool in a pre-season friendly.
The match, a testimonial for the popular, ex-City skipper Andy Morrison, had offered fans an excursion to the seaside amidst a pre-season schedule with few attractive awaydays.
However, the game has now been cancelled and City will instead travel to Doncaster Rovers on the same day.
Four days after the Doncaster clash, City will be away at Hull, pitting themselves against both automatically promoted sides from Division Three last season.
Full schedule
July 21st - Bury away 7.30
July 24th - Doncaster Rovers away 3.00
July 28th - Hull away 7.45
July 30th - Wolves away 7.45
August 2nd - Reading away 8.00
August 7th - tbc at Eastlands
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What kind of preparation for the Premier league is this?! I can appreciate the fact that you can't play top opposition every game and playing lower league sides in a few games is beneficial although probably more so for the nationwide team but we really should be playing better teams than this (no disrespect to the likes of Doncaster & co). It would appear the dire financial situation is now dictating things far more than we realise forcing the club to abandon pre-season trips to Europe!
We really are a tin-pot outfit. Not only is this completely rubbish preparation for a tough season in the prem, it's embarrasing frankly.
Seems like we're back to normal hear. Before last season, our last decent trip abroad was to play in Italy way back c.1991/1992 against some lower end Serie A teams like Brescia and Cremonese. Rather they play English opposition than lower grade rubbish from Scandinavia. If they can't get decent friendlies lined up in Germany, France, Italy or Spain then stay at home. Nothing wrong with it! I can guarantee that the top London sides will be playing against non-League in friendlies as well as League clubs. If it's good for them, it's good for us!
We should be playing W.Brom, Norwich and Palace/W.Ham 'cos we'll need the practice!!
The fixture list doesn't give me a thrill, but if the purpose is to get fit and up to speed, it might not be too bad. Actually, if we were playing away to any of this little lot in a cup competition, there might have been a few worried looks out there, knowing our cup tie exploits against the smaller clubs. And we can be sure that there will be someone in those teams who want to do one on City, even in a friendly. Let's be honest, if we were to play some team from Poland with about 15 letters in the name, and we lost, we wouldn't know the merit of the result. When you get beaten by teams like Donny, it's different. There's no hiding place there.
Andrew the top sides will be playing some games against lower league opposition but you will find that they will be playing 2 or 3 against top sides as well, either from Europe, the PREM or Rangers and Celtic. The teams from the Nationwide offer you a different type of football and you know they'll be 'up for it' but we should be playing better 'technical' sides as well if we want to prepare seriously!
This about 2 things really - city just required to get fit trying new stuff and helping out the lower teams financially. It is basically goodwill, I am not too concerned. I was just about to book my flights into Blackpool for this game as could have doubled up with chasing the slappers which were sure to be around.Ha well have to save that for another time!!
My guess is that CITY are playing the list of Pre Season Friendlies against lower opposition, and we have more than the usual ammount of Pre Season games, is to give a few of the up and coming youngsters a chance to play that they deserve, and to also get the senior players fit.