Man City’s 1-0 win over Blackpool at Eastlands encapsulated everything that has been wrong with the Christmas and New Year Gameweeks. While the match itself will likely go down as one of the season’s best, it delivered frustration in the extreme for Fantasy Managers.
Hat-trick hero Mario Balotelli made a mockery of any opportunist investment following his strikes against Villa by missing the game with a knee injury, then, once the game kicked off, the irritation levels just escalated.
Carlos Tevez, sporting the Fantasy Premier League armband from many of his owners, fluffed a first-half penalty and then seemingly went out of his way to deny us any chance of compensation. Tevez missed an abundance of chances – even managing to lose his footing in a slapstick style, having rounded keeper Richard Kingson with the Blackpool goal gaping. He’s ruined the first Match of the Day of 2011.
For those who doubled up on City’s raiding left-back Aleksandar Kolarov, the pain was magnified further. The Serb, so prominent in City’s attacks in his last two starts for Roberto Mancini’s side, felt the wrath of his manager as he continually wasted possession and opportunities to deliver telling crosses. On 58 minutes Mancini had seen enough and Kolarov was subbed – just two minutes before the 60 minute cut-off for a clean sheet.
The City situation is just becoming annoying now. Potentially a rich source of attacking and defensive points, the options to rotate and tinker available to Roberto Mancini are beginning to bite hard with the full-back situation summing up the current plight. Short of taking the plunge with Joe Hart or the unfashionable and expensive Kolo Toure, it’s looking impossible to find a secure option in a defence that has now kept 10 clean sheets, the best total in the league. I’m expecting to see Kolarov miss out at the Emirates in the week now, with Pablo Zabaleta presenting a safer option for Mancini at left-back. Who can really say when we will see the Serb back in the side, let alone cement his starting role.
As for Tevez, I’ll forgive today’s crimes with the prospect of plenty of points from him in Gameweek’s to come, but I can’t help but think that his fortunes over the past three Gameweeks epitomise the suffering of the Christmas period – 16 points on Boxing Day, rested the Gameweek after, zero points with golden opportunities missed today.
Fantasy Managers have been reluctantly riding a Gameweek roller-coaster of late, and very few of us have managed to get off the thing smiling. Tevez and City certainly delivered one hell of drop today.
