With Tottenham Hotspur taking victory over Manchester City in our two legged Champions League quarter-final, BBC pundit Mark Lawrenson has predicted that the game this weekend in the Premier League will be a different affair – subject to one selection change.
Back in 2017, Pep Guardiola erred when talking about Spurs and opened himself up to headlines suggesting he believed we were a one man team owing to our scoring reliance on England striker Harry Kane.
“The Harry Kane team” was hardly his best use of the language in fairness and from memory he quickly walked back and clarified his original meaning, but I have found some joy in Lawrenson’s latest predictions ahead of Saturday’s action, and if you wanted to be cheeky, he’s fallen into making the same mistake.
“Surely City won’t be as open in this game as they were on Wednesday night – they cannot afford to invite any more chaos this time. With Harry Kane out injured, City must have known Spurs would want to play on the break with pace so I did not understand why Fernandinho did not start, because his game is all about protecting their back two or back four. City have got enough players who can go and win them the game without being so gung-ho about it, and I thought they missed the Brazilian midfielder in that crazy opening spell when Son Heung-min scored twice. So I would expect Fernandinho to start on Saturday and, if he is patrolling those deep midfield areas, I think City will control the game this time far better than they did in midweek.
“2-0” to City.
Whatever Spurs fans think of Fernandinho, he only entered play after the hour mark on Wednesday night and by that point we’d already swapped injured Moussa Sissoko for Fernando Llorente and were more unbalanced with them taking advantage, but it made me smile in any event.
For many, this was the game out of our recent run that few cared about, but if Lawrenson ends up eating his words a great week will simply become better.