View From A Blue

Pantilimon - Sunderland pinched an early goal – one that Pantilimon was helpless to prevent – and then sat back to resolutely defend their gains. As such, they offered very little in attack and even when they were pushing for an equaliser in the second half, they barely tested the giant Romanian - 6 Zabaleta - With Sunderland content to defend narrowly [...]

So, there it is. A further trophy added to our rapidly-growing collection, this time delivered by one nonchalant brush of Yaya Touré artistic right-foot and Samir Nasri’s swerving, powerful, emphatic strike. The first-half lethargy, bringing unhappy memories of last season’s FA Cup heartbreak sharply back to mind, was cast off in the space of a couple [...]

Costel Pantilimon is expected to start in goal ahead of Joe Hart. Having featured in all but one of the Capital One Cup ties so far this season, the Romanian is likely to benefit from the more personal man-management skills and loyalty of Manuel Pellegrini, unlike last year’s ruthless demotion to the bench courtesy of Roberto [...]

Esporte Interativo, a hugely popular Brazilian TV channel, recently conducted an interview with Manchester City’s talented Academy prospect, Marcos ‘Rony’ Lopes. You can read the interview in Portuguese here, here and here but thanks to Esporte Interativo and in particular Otavio Rodrigues, the journalist who spoke at length with Lopes, I was given to permission to translate the [...]

Hart - One excellent full-length stop to deny Charlie Adam in the first-half but after that, his biggest issue was keeping warm - 6 Zabaleta - Barely tested defensively and that meant his main impact came in trying to offer an element of width on the right as we searched for the breakthrough. Much of our play, however, was focused more centrally [...]