Manchester City chief Sven-Goran Eriksson has promised to shuffle his side around ahead of their clash with the Canaries tonight.
But before any of you get too excited, with all the luxuries at Sven's disposal it will certainly be a team with enough firepower to worry under-pressure Norwich boss Peter Grant.
“We are going to make some changes for the match, but we will have a very good team,” said Eriksson, speaking to the Manchester City official website.
“We had players sitting on the bench on Saturday like Bianchi and Geovanni they will start the game. Geovanni has been injured in the beginning of the season, came in, but was then injured again. I think he came on and did very well on Saturday. With a little bit of luck he could have scored a goal. He looked very sharp. Bianchi had some problems to settle in, but I hope he will overcome that and shows us he's the goalscorer we wanted to have here. I'm sure he will be, he works very hard in training.
“Joe Hart will start the game tomorrow. I've always said, I don't know who is our best goalkeeper at this moment. We have the two young boys and Isaksson is young as well.
“It's very difficult and when you talk about goalkeepers it's a very specialised position. You don't change goalkeepers every week and you have to stick with them for a longer time because it's a particular position on the pitch.
“We play good football. For big parts of the games, almost all of the games, we are playing good football.
“Many games we've created a lot of chances, but not scored many goals, but at Fulham we created and scored.
“I wasn't completely happy because I think we conceded goals a little bit more easily than we did in the past. But 3-3, if you look at the show, it's better than 0-0.”
England Under 21 keeper Hart, fully fit now after early season problems, is hoping to give the Manager plenty to think about. Son of Peter, Kasper Schmeichel, has been in fine form between the sticks for the Eastlands club so far. But Hart too is well thought of; tonight is really his chance to shine.
“I haven't had that many games this season, with everything that's been going on, but I'm happy to get my go,” admitted Hart.
“Hopefully we can get the win and carry on in this competition.
“We changed our side for the Bristol City game, but Sven spoke to us before and told us that it wasn't because he's not interested in this competition. He had more than 11 players ready to play for Manchester City, and this is an opportunity to give everyone a go to show what they can do.
“In a Cup competition, everything goes out of the window. It does not matter who you play, you could be playing Arsenal or Norwich but they can perform on the day. It's down to us to be professional and perform the best we can to get a result.
“To start the season like we have means that everyone's confident and happy, the players that were brought in are exciting, everyone's getting to know each other and it's an exciting place to be at the moment. Things are definitely on the up.”
Despite a number of top teams devaluing the competition in recent years, City and England defender Micah Richards ? who has been in sparkling form for club and country ? is in no mood to take the Carling Cup lightly.
“A Cup run would be nice, we've had a few bad experiences in the past,” said Richards.
“Everyone wants to play in a Cup final and I know people are saying we're third in the league at the moment and that's a Champions League place, but we've got to be realistic.
“If we win against Norwich, then get a couple of good draws, hopefully we'll be able to go out and show teams what we can do.”
Micah is also looking forward to being able to welcome back a friend and former team mate. He added: “Yes, we've got Lee Croft coming back and he's been giving me some banter, saying to me: 'Tell Sven to play you at right back' so he can come over to the left and do his tricks against me.
“So hopefully it'll be nice if we can get a good win. We've got the team to do it, but it's all about on the night and we are at home as well, so that should give us the confidence we need.”
TOM HAYLETT
Leave a Reply