City Down Under News

[Rowley Birkin QC]

Yes - good goal.

This half has not been quite as good as the first - largely due to Yaya dropping a lot deeper and not so threatening. And to be fair, Melbourne have been better organised defensively this half and they've shut Navas down.

Evans on for Yaya

[Rowley Birkin QC]

Oh - and Fafana for Nasri

[Rowley Birkin QC]

We win 1-0

Not a bad work out. Nasri took his goal very well. Hard to draw any serious conclusions from that.

Bosnich currently interviewing Yaya...

[Rowley Birkin QC]

Manuel Garcia looked promising - some nice touches

[KunDB]

Damn I missed it............bad start to my day.

[gavin]

Mainly kids playing with a few first teamers. More 'serious' friendlies next week but still a good run out for a few and always nice to win any game.

[goat]

have the aussies replaced villa as the fancy player?

[nimrod]

Didnt enjoy the game tbh, good atmosphere though, Navas is shit

all in all a bit disappointing

[gavin]

Friendlies innit, they are rarely a competitive, enjoyable spectacle especially early on. The lads are just getting a run out at this stage.

[bluebrendan]

I'm not his biggest fan but I don't understand the criticism of Navas in today's game, I thought he did well. Pellegrini's oddball idea of starting with a winger as central striker and leaving 3 strikers on the bench meant Navas had nobody to aim his crosses at most of the time as Barker's movement in the central role not surprisingly left a bit to be desired and nobody seemed keen on making decent early runs from midfield into the box in the first half so Navas ended up either having to shoot or cut back and wait for a pass to become available.

Positives were Maffeo and Garcia, both good prospects, Barker looked much better on the wing and Nasri was more interested than usual.

All in all a typical pre-season work-out, not worth paying much to watch but it got me out of bed early for a Saturday! 

[nimrod]

Mainly kids playing with a few first teamers. More 'serious' friendlies next week but still a good run out for a few and always nice to win any game.

always puzzles me this, if they do these tours to win fans & PR etc, why do they play all these unknown kids, they only play this one game in Queensland and they do this?
This game would not create many fans and the existing fans felt let down by the selections/formations, It was a disappointing game people were pretty bored by HT so I dont see the PR in it.

Were not a big club here, on Friday night the dippers played Brisbane Roar in Brisbane and the whole of Brisbane seems to be decked out in red all day, Liverpool, like our swampy friends are huge here

[Rowley Birkin QC]

Bloody hell - I wasn't bored at all (and I was watching on TV). I enjoyed taking a look at some of the youngsters.

These games aren't just about promotion and kit sales though are they? Certainly that's part of it, but from the manager's perspective it's a chance to give everyone a run out and assess fitness etc. So it's always going to be a bit of a mash up. It is what it is.

,,,and we'd be as 'huge' as the bindippers as well down here if we'd not been so cripplingly mismanaged and run during the 1980's and most of the 90's.

Here in Melbourne, the Real Madrid v City game at the MCG is a sell out (interestingly last night's Real v Roma game wasn't... so City a bigger draw than Roma?)  They're expecting close to 100,000 for Real v City - and while the majority will no doubt be there to watch Real I predict there will be a significant swathe of sky blue around the crowd. For Tuesday night's City v Roma game the crowd will be in excess of 60,000. The local City supporters branch seem well organised - all sorts of events on. You Queenslanders are fecking lightweights