Carabao Cup: Fulham Preview

How Many Players Will be Rested?

Games against Fulham at the Etihad are like buses. None for a while and then 2 seem to come along at once. So City find themselves playing Fulham just a few weeks after beating them 3:0 in the Premier League. On that day back in September City were clicking into gear and Sane scored within the first 2 minutes to start off what could have been a torrid time for Fulham.

David Silva scored after 20 minutes and Raheem Sterling completed the rout after 47 minutes. It was difficult to believe the final score ended up as 3:0, because City had so many chances and simply didn’t take many of them.

Playing Fulham again so soon after the last time and on a Thursday evening has led to some apathy amongst Manchester City fans about the match. Probably not assisted by the fact most believe many of the stalwart first teamers for Manchester City are likely to be rested for this game, so the club have accordingly tried to offset the impact by announcing some very keen ticket prices for the match.

Whether a combination of cheap ticket prices and half term serve to create a larger crowd for this Cup tie is difficult to predict. Its clear there are a number of seats still available for this game so its a great opportunity to get out and see some players who we may not get to see too often.

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Playing a number of the fringe players in the first team squad always makes the game result hard to try and predict. Whilst it is easy to bring a couple of these players into the side and for it to have little impact on the momentum and intensity of the team, wholesale changes tend to have a detrimental effect.

Hopefully the fringe players will fully accept the opportunity they have to force their way into the plans of Guardiola and will seize their moment. Fulham are on a bad run of form and I believe they will view this game as an opportunity to buck that unwelcome trend. I expect Fulham to field many of their first team 11 in stark contrast to the approach we are likely to take. This may make the result much closer than we may anticipate.

I like the League Cup and would really like City to go all out to retain it. I know City may well view it as the least important of the competitions they compete for but I find its a good competition for fans – with many tickets actually available for us should we be lucky enough to reach the final.

So, get down to the Etihad on Thursday night and I expect you will get to see a different looking Manchester City team. I suspect City will line up in a usual 4-3-3 formation as follows:

Goalkeeper: Muric

Defence: Kyle Walker, Vincent Kompany, Nicolas Otamendi, Zinchenko

Midfield: Fabian Delph, Phil Foden, David Silva

Attack: Brahim Diaz, Gabriel Jesus, Riyad Mahrez