For our third successive early Sunday kick-off, City travel up to Sunderland to take on Roy Keane's *spits* merry band of pikeys and ex-rags. Looking to build on the impressive display against West Ham last week, the Blues will welcome back Vincent Kompany into the starting line-up following his absence from Europe on Thursday evening.Last year's corresponding fixture saw the Blues record an extremely rare second-half-of-the-season away victory, courtesy of a penalty from Elano and a late winner from the ever-reliable goal machine, Darius Vassell. This rounded off an impressive record against the Mackems in 2007/2008 as we also beat them 1-0 at Eastlands earlier in the season following a memorable thunderbolt from our very own hair-regrowth expert, Stephen Ireland.
The Black Cats were unlucky to lose their opening day fixture against the Bin Dippers after Fernando Torres curled a beauty past Craig Gordon in the 83rd minute. They then went on to chalk up their first points of the season with a well-deserved 2-1 victory at the ever-delusional White Hart Lane, thanks to goals from some ex-rag no-mark and Djibril Cisse, who had turned down a move to God's own team just two days earlier.
The fixture Gods have been anything but kind to MCFC Dubai so far this season, but we will soldier on admirably in the face of adversity. And fear not, fellow Blues, as we will finally get a chance to return to our beloved Players' Lounge for our next fixture, which is on Saturday *gasp* September 13th. Unfortunately, it's against Chelsea and is followed by two more Sunday games!
For this weekend's game against Sunderland, however, we will be heading to The Locker Room at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Las Barsha. The game kicks off at 6.00pm (Dubai time), so please just get there as soon as work allows.
Dave
