When the contracts come upNovember 7th, 2006

I thought I’d compile of list of when the players’ contracts expire, and was a little concerned to discover that eight first-team regulars will be free agents this summer.

The squad members missing from the list are Ishmael Miller and Michael Johnson. Miller signed his first professional contract at the start of the 2005/06 season, while Johnson was given a contract last season. It’s unclear how long either contract is for, though.

Here’s when the contracts expire:

Next summer:
(current squad number and player)
3 Ben Thatcher
4 Stephen Jordan
6 Claudio Reyna
12 Nicky Weaver
15 Sylvain Distin
24 DaMarcus Beasley
27 Hatem Trabelsi
28 Trevor Sinclair

Summer 2008:
14 Paul Dickov
16 Nedum Onuoha
17 Jihai Sun
18 Danny Mills
19 Kasper Schmeichel
21 Dietmar Hamann

Summer 2009:
1 Andreas Isaksson
5 Ousmane Dabo
7 Stephen Ireland
11 Darius Vassell
22 Richard Dunne
26 Matthew Mills
30 Bernardo Corradi

Summer 2010:
2 Micah Richards
8 Joey Barton
25 Joe Hart
20 Georgios Samaras

Tomorrow’s purelymancity

We’ll be looking at the agents who represent City’s players, and on Thursday we’ll turn our attentions to the wage bill.

Reaction, stats & ratings: City v Charlton

There was a lot of talk before this game about City’s away form, and why it is so bad when we have been winning games at home.

I’ve been wondering that too, before an awful thought struck me. What if our away form is actually a fair reflection of our abilities, with our home form merely flattering to deceive?

Our win against Arsenal owed a lot to good fortune, the Thatcher effect and Arsenal’s stuttering start. West Ham were going through an awful spell when we beat them while Boro were just plain dismal. But we failed to beat the two teams who were showing any sort of form or spirit, Pompey and Sheffield Utd.

And did we deserve anything from the defeats away to Chelsea, Wigan and Blackburn? We played well enough for a point at Charlton, and on another day might even have snatched a win. But this is a team currently bottom of the table whom we beat comfortably last season.

I was watching the highlights of last season’s game at Charlton on Channel M last week, which featured two goals and two assists from Andrew Cole. His contribution last season (details here) stands in stark contrast to this season’s strike force.

Corradi, Dickov and Vassell have between them played more than 25 hours of Premiership football this season without a single goal. Samaras has scored twice in 11hrs 44mins, meaning our four strikers are currently averaging a goal every 18.6 hours.

So far we’ve got away with it at home. The support of the crowd, the defensive nature of away teams and the odd goal from a set-piece has papered over the cracks. We’ll probably get away with it again on Saturday against the toothless Newcastle side.

My fear is what might happen when the form teams visit Eastlands, the ones who don’t share our difficulty in scoring.

~ Pearce’s post-match interview can be found here, while Getty Images and sportbox.tv have pictures from the game.

Match stats

The stats are compiled from the live commentary and differ slightly from Sky’s stats, which can be found here.

Season-on-season table

City drop one place to 16th in the season-on-season table, which compares results to the corresponding fixtures from last year. We could drop even further should we fail to beat Newcastle on Saturday, as last season we beat them 3-0 at home.

Newcastle are down by 15 points so far this season, which at 1.36pts a game makes them the most underperforming team in the league. Should that form continue all season Newcastle would finish on just 21pts.

The latest Premiership table can be found here.


(Results against last season’s relegated clubs - Sunderland, West Brom and Birmingham - are compared to Sheff Utd, Watford and Reading respectively.)

Match reports

Charlton 1 City 0 (MEN)
Manager Stuart Pearce had kept an unchanged side for the first time in 29 games following last Monday’s 1-0 home win over Middlesbrough. But his belated changes just failed to pay off as Charlton clung to a hard-earned victory.

Bent gets straight to the points (Observer)
City’s defence has the worst away record in the Premiership and it was obvious why when Andy Reid waltzed past three defenders with hardly a challenge in sight before shooting wide in the opening minute. It took midfielder Joey Barton to show his defenders what to do with a last-ditch lunge to prevent a cross from Luke Young from reaching Darren Bent in front of goal in the seventh minute.

Pressure on Dowie eases as Bent rises to occasion (Independent)
For now, though, City remain like some weird version of a weather house in which normal custom has been inverted: when they are at home, the mood is sunny; but as soon as they step outside, it all goes very gloomy.

Bent and Carson display their worth to Charlton (Telegraph)
Four years ago Claudio Reyna was a World Cup dynamo for the United States, but at 33 his momentum has declined, and the central midfield partnership with Joey Barton lacks real authority, while Trevor Sinclair and American DaMarcus Beasley on the flanks are more fizz than finish.

Bent to the rescue again (The Times)
“On another day we probably win the game 2 or 3-1, but when you tie it onto a poor run of form away from home, you’re very disappointed,” Stuart Pearce said. “It’s important for us to get something on the road sooner rather than later because we’re going to be forever having massive cup finals and pressure games when we come back home.”

Charlton 1 Man City 0 (The People)
Pearce used four strikers, threw everyone bar Nicky Weaver forward and could still not punish a team that looked plain scared.

Player ratings

Not many player ratings this week, but I imagine they’ll be back in force for the next game. I’ve omitted Reyna’s Sky Your Rating score of 8.2 as this is clearly Claudio’s mum voting 100 times.

The ratings come from (in order): MEN, The People, The Times, Sky, Sky Your Rating.

Weaver: 5, 6, 7, 7, 7.0 (av: 6.4)
Abused mercilessly throughout by the Charlton fans but didn’t rise to the bait and made two fine saves after break (MEN)
Richards: 7, 8, 8, 7, 7.4 (av: 7.5)
Won header after header in Charlton box but couldn’t find the goal his efforts deserved. Saved goal with second half block (MEN)
A constant threat with his speedy runs down the right and also with his aerial ability at set pieces (Observer)
Dunne: 6, 6, 6, 7, 7.1 (av: 6.4)
Bent is a handful and Addicks would be lost without him but Blues central defenders did reasonably well against him (MEN)
Distin: 6, 6, 6, 7, 6.9 (av: 6.4)
Still looks amongst most elegant of Premiership defenders and not overtaxed in this contest. He and Dunne remain fine pairing (MEN)
Thatcher: 6, 5, 6, 6, 6.6 (av: 5.9)
Two matches back and short on hard fitness but has hardly put foot wrong in either game he has played (MEN)
Sinclair: 6, 7, 7, 7, 6.7 (av: 6.7)
Still shows great flashes of ability and was unlucky not to open scoring with first half header cleared off the line (MEN)
Barton: 6, 6, 7, 8, 7.3, (av: 6.9)
Delivers a decent selection of dead balls and but his passing and shooting not up to same high standard in this one (MEN)
Reyna: 5, 5, 5, 6, - (av: 5.3)
If anyone is equipped to find the killer pass it is surely the American but it continued to elude him all afternoon (MEN)
Beasley (Vassell 50): 5, 6, 5, 6, 7.4 (av: 5.9)
Couple of runs that promised more than they delivered and wasn’t helped by poor passing of teammates. Injured (MEN)
Samaras (Trabelsi 64): 5, 5, 4, 7, 7.2 (av: 5.6)
One shot brilliantly saved but doesn’t use his size to stamp self on contest and rarely got into the open to threaten (MEN)
Dickov (Corradi 64): 5, 5, 5, 6, 6.4 (av: 5.5)
Was left to do the kind of enforcing role that Samaras should have been doing and as a result few chances to shine (MEN)

Subs:

Vassell (Beasley 50): 6, 6, - , 6, 6.4 (av: 6.1)
Pace makes difference booked for diving (MEN)
Corradi (Dickov 64): 6, 6, - , 7, 5.8 (av: 6.2)
Carson denied him with great save (MEN)
Trabelsi (Samaras 64): 6, 6, - , 7, 5.5 (av: 6.1)
Cclassy act hit post late on (MEN)

Subs not used:
Hart, Johnson.

Meat Pie

For something totally unrelated to City but interesting anyway, click the Meat Pie button on the top right.

Entry Filed under: Features