City's First loss of the Season

SAFC Reserves 1 - 0 MCFC Reserves


A game where City dominated most of the possession ended in defeat because ultimately City lacked the support players from the quality of the spine of the team. This defeat meant that City ended their unbeaten start to the season and failed to return to the top of the league after Middlesbrough had leap-frogged them on Monday evening due to a superior goal difference. Sunderland’s goal came in seventy third minute by a strike from Daryl Murphy, beating Weaver at his near post.

As I said the problem with the team was that we started with a 4-5-1 formation which has become so fashionable in the first teams. That is said to have come from Chelsea, however Chelsea play a 4-3-3 formation where both wingers are up front supporting the lone striker at all available opportunity. In our reserve team, our eldest outfield players were Nasser Hussein and Lee Croft and were two of our least effective players because they we not getting forward enough to support Ishmael Miller as the lone striker up front.

Man of the match for the second week running was Jonathan D’Laryea who worked tirelessly in midfield to win the ball and drive the team forward, but as he had no support from the rest of the midfield making runs of the ball to run into space or create space to enable shots to be taken, he was forced into sideways passes when approaching the penalty area.

Sunderland’s goal came when a long pass came over to Murphy on their left and Micah Richards who was tightly marking him; lost his footing and fell over when Murphy turned sharply. Murphy decided to drive all the way into the box and finished firmly into the bottom left of the corner. Weaver, returning from injury would have been disappointed that he was beaten at the near post as it wasn’t the firmest of shots and looked like it could have been saved had he positioned himself slightly better.

City had already brought Daniel Sturridge on at this point to help support Miller, but as Hussein and Croft were not working hard enough and Marc Laird lacks any real quality, City were running out of ideas.

City’s reserve team seem’s to be loosing out now that Stephen Ireland’s quality is now being recognised in the first team; but if Nedum Onuoha is not regularly starting for the first team and neither is David Sommeil, both player’s should be playing at least sixty minutes in the reserves thereby allowing Richards to play in his best role in the centre of midfield and allow him and Jonathan to dominate any opposition with their undoubted quality and allow Ishmael to have a partner up front at all times be it Sturridge or Bradley Wright Phillips when he returns from his knee injury; hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

Playing players like Ian Bennett does the club no favours as he clearly has not the talent to be a first team player with City, neither has Marc Laird, but he would be more use to us than the money we are wasting on Nasser Hussein who brings nothing to the Manchester City table.

There were many plus points from the game, not least the impressive reserve league debuts of Shaleum Logan at right back and Kyle Wallwork as Richards centre half partner. With Sunderland making it free entry on the night and providing a lot of auxiliary entertainment prior to the match to celebrate the launch of their new home kit, the attendance was swelled to an impressive 3953. City’s next reserve game sees the visit of Bolton Wanderers to the Regional Athletics arena at Sportcity on Tuesday 11th October.


MCFC(4-5-1): Weaver(GK), Logan, Collins, J D’Laryea, Richards(Capt.), Wallwork, Croft, Laird(Johnson 77), Miller, Bennett(Sturridge 67), Hussein.

Subs: Schmeichel(GK), Obeng, Marshall.


SAFC(4-4-2): Murphy(GK), Taylor(Capt.), Smith, Stubbs, Christensen, Martin, McFarlane, Woods, Murphy, Graham, Davison.

Subs: Carson(GK), Allen, Richardson, Ball, Weir.

Att: 3953

MoM: J D’Laryea – for the second week running, shone out as City’s best player at all levels.