We have our first kick-off of the weekend and we have a beauty to getting things rolling. Fantasy managers are treated to watching their Man City assets dance around Martin O’Neill’s fortifications for 90 minutes in what could either be a 3-3 thriller to mirror last season’s match, or be an inevitable battle of attrition as City struggle to blow Sunderland’s house down. Either way, we’ll be glued to it and savouring every minute as we stare into the precipice of an international break.
As highlighted in Andy’s overnight Catch-Up article Roberto Mancini has stuck true to his word and made more than a few notable changes to his City outfit from Wednesday’s game playing host to Dortmund.
An entire strike-force switch sees both Sergio Aguero and Edin Dzeko rested to the bench as Carlos Tevez and Mario Balotelli start in their place. Micah Richards has finally recovered from injury to start at centre-back alongside Joleon Lescott with captain Vincent Kompany and Matija Nastasic absent from the squad entirely – calf and ankle injuries are to blame respectively. To round out the changes Aleksandr Kolarov, Gareth Barry and James Milner also come in for Gael Clichy, Samir Nasri and the injured Javi Garcia.
Martin O’Neill has been a lot calmer on the rotation front by welcoming Carlos Cuellar back from injury and into his starting XI as Sunderland’s only change from last weekend. The teams in full are…
Man City XI: Hart, Zabaleta, Richards, Lescott, Kolarov, Milner, Barry, Y. Toure, Silva, Balotelli, Tevez
Man City Subs: Pantilimon, Clichy, K.Toure, Rodwell, Nasri, Aguero, DzekoSunderland XI: Mignolet, Gardner, Cuellar, O’Shea , Rose, Colback, Larsson, Johnson, McClean, Sessegnon, Fletcher.
Sunderland Subs: Campbell, Kilgallon, Vaughan, Meyler, Bramble, Saha, Westwood.
Our Dugout Discussion chatroom is open and ready to withstand all your reactions in real-time from this and all today’s encounters.
