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Emirates Marketing Project

The beeb said:
Posted at 14:1914:19
'A great gesture'
Emirates Marketing Project v Birmingham City (Sun, 13:30 GMT)

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Emirates Marketing Project

The news earlier was that Emirates Marketing Project had bought an FA Cup - the first one the club won, in 1904.

Manager Pep Guardiola says it is a "great gesture" by the club.

"This Club does exceptional things. Class gesture. It’s the first trophy City won, the first one in Manchester and we can have it and put it in the national museum. Top class," he said.
How the fudge is City buying a trophy news? It's all they do.
 
Foden did a double ‘zidane’ (and scored the winner) in the game against Brighton before being fouled. He’s become a permanent member of Pep’s starting eleven. I worry about what he’ll do to Dier and co in the league cup final.
 
Foden did a double ‘zidane’ (and scored the winner) in the game against Brighton before being fouled. He’s become a permanent member of Pep’s starting eleven. I worry about what he’ll do to Dier and co in the league cup final.
Nothing a few reducers shared throughout the team won’t resolve...
 
Phil Foden bewitches Liverpool: this is the best young player in England
Homegrown youngster makes the difference to pull Emirates Marketing Project clear in the match and the title race

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Phil Foden gave Fabinho a torrid evening. Photograph: Jon Super/EPA

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Barney Ronay
@barneyronay
Sun 7 Feb 2021 15.57 EST

Let us take a moment to consider Phil Foden’s surging run. Never mind for now the goal he would score 10 minutes later to kill this game.

Park that exhilarating, high-craft goal. OK, stop looking at the goal for a moment.

Focus instead on the surging run to make the goal that broke this game open. It was a run that came at the end of passage of woeful Liverpool defending, but which was all the more thrillingly pure in its execution as a result, the game of football clearing its throat and letting out a perfect pitch C note.

Foden has always been an excellent dribbler. Dribbling is probably the wrong word. He glides and feints. When he beats his man it is an expression of greater balance and superior touch, a man who is simply better friends with the ball, the angles, gravity.

With 73 minutes gone and the score 1-1 at Anfield Foden took the ball from Alisson’s shanked clearance on the left of the Liverpool area. There were two players in front of him: the captain of Liverpool and the best left-back in the league.

Foden surged, swayed and pressed the throttle. There was no sense of show or flamboyance. This was cold. It was merciless opportunism, hidden in a lovely little miniature of fine-point skill.

Either way, he basically walked straight through those two red shirts, then nudged the perfect pass for Ilkay Gündogan to poach his second goal of the game and make the score 2-1.

At this point, and before we are allowed to consider Foden’s goal 13 minutes later – stop looking at the wonderful, captivating goal – it is worth noting his previous surging run.

This came three minutes earlier. It was Fabinho again. This time Foden spun away from him on the left, prodded the ball past, then reached down into that newly honed acceleration, drawing Fabinho into a panicked grab of the shirt and a yellow card.

Fabinho looked a little fried in that moment. Oh dear. It turns out this twirling little nightmare of technique and finesse can turn on the thrusters too – product, according to Jamie Carragher on Sky Sports, of training with a sprint coach.

Foden had been neat and quietly menacing until those final 20 minutes. From that Fabinho grab onwards he was irresistible, a 20-year-old who just looks ready now, whose emergence has been perfectly managed – a riposte to those who, as with Thomas Tuchel, have summoned up the tired old coming-over-here-neglecting-the-English-lads trope.

The game had been tight and even quite turgid in the first half. Anfield has been Pep Guardiola’s cursed earth, a ground he calls “that place”, venue for more defeats than any other in his managerial career. In recent years Guardiola has tended to blink here, to fiddle with his team. This time he went with the structure that has taken City a long way down what is now a 14-game winning streak: inverted full-backs, false nine, no space behind on the flanks.
The opening 20 minutes were tight, flat and contained. Foden touched the ball four times. Guardiola watched quietly, resplendent in ribbed beanie hat and fluffy gothic-glamour scarf, a look that said: ‘I am confident here. I feel calmly expressive. I possibly also have a cold neck.’

After half-time City shifted to a 4-4-2, with a little-man-little-man strike duo of Foden and Bernardo Silva. Within three minutes they had scored. It came from Raheem Sterling, who had already earned City a first-half penalty (Gündogan missed it) by erasing Trent Alexander-Arnold with a waggle of his hips.

This was a reconstruction, Sterling swaying past Liverpool’s right-back like a man avoiding a traffic cone on a busy pavement, then releasing the ball. Foden’s shot was well saved by Alisson, the rebound tucked in by Gündogan.

And yes, OK we can talk about that Foden goal now. There were seven minutes to go, City were 3-1 up, Sterling having added a third. Gabriel Jesus floated a pass out to Foden on the right.

This time he feinted to go outside, jinked inside, then spanked a shot hard and flat past Alisson and into the net. There was joy even in the way Foden just kept on running as the ball left his foot, perfectly balanced in his celebratory sprint.

Some things were settled here. Liverpool need a minor sporting miracle to catch the league leaders now. Best of all, there was an outline at Anfield of the clean, clear, pressure-hardened talent of City’s academy kid: the best young player in England, and currently playing a major hand in what would be an era-clinching league title.
 
Thoughts and prayers are with you Pep, only spending £300m a season minimum it must be so hard to work with those limitations

Pep Guardiola on Emirates Marketing Project's chances of signing a Sergio Aguero replacement:
"We have enough players in the first-team right now, and we have interesting players in the academy. Today there is more chance we are not going to buy any striker for the next season."
 
fudging BBC is running a piece on City, the "club with a soul"

I fudging kid you not .. people write this brick with some semblance of dignity?
 
fudging BBC is running a piece on City, the "club with a soul"

I fudging kid you not .. people write this brick with some semblance of dignity?
When 2 weeks ago they were the sum of the earth and one of the clubs who might have ended football
The hypocrisy is unreal in the media !!
 
fudging BBC is running a piece on City, the "club with a soul"

I fudging kid you not .. people write this brick with some semblance of dignity?

I know. I saw this from the Standard this morning, couldn't bear to click on the actual article.


He stands on the brink of "absolute greatness".
Built and re-built the team.. Yeah, just keep throwing more and more money at it - how long did it take?
 
fudging BBC is running a piece on City, the "club with a soul"

I fudging kid you not .. people write this brick with some semblance of dignity?

They might have some soul left somewhere underneath the multiple layers of money that bought their way to the CL final. Perhaps it's a nostalgic and critical throwback to the time when City was still a properly run football club, and not the most successful of the cheat mode clubs?

Nah, didn't think so.
 
Richards wanting City to do things the right way again it seems

There are three players I would sign to make Emirates Marketing Project even better next season, and one of them is a former team-mate of mine who can do things even Phil Foden can't.

First things first, though - there is going to be a gap to fill in their squad.

I know Pep Guardiola has often played without a striker during this campaign and it has obviously worked out pretty well for him - City have won the Premier League and are in the Champions League final - but they still need the option of using one when required.

City goalscoring legend Sergio Aguero is leaving in the summer, which would leave Gabriel Jesus as the only recognised senior centre-forward at the club.

So, I would go for another striker and if money were no object and I could sign anyone, available or not, I'd get Kylian Mbappe from Paris St-Germain.

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France international and World Cup winner Mbappe has scored 40 goals in 45 games in all competitions in 2020-21. He has one year left on his PSG contract
Mbappe hogs the left touchline a lot but he can also play as a regular number nine and, wherever he starts out on the pitch, you just know he is going to get behind the opposition defence and hurt them.

I watch him and think he would be the missing piece of the jigsaw for City. Sign him now, at the age of 22, and they would dominate for as long as they wanted to, I've no doubt about that.

'It's his finishing that is special'
Sadly, Mbappe probably isn't a realistic option for Guardiola this summer but my second choice as City's next striker could be up for grabs.

At 20, Borussia Dortmund's Erling Braut Haaland is even younger than Mbappe but the reason he is so exciting is not because of his potential - it's because he is already guaranteed to get you goals.

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Haaland scored twice in Dortmund's win over RB Leipzig in last week's German Cup final to take his total to 39 goals in 39 games for his club in all competitions this season
I don't think his link-up play is all that, as we saw over the two legs of Dortmund's Champions League quarter-final defeat by City. I expected more from him outside the box, and he clearly isn't the finished article as a player yet.

But it's his finishing that is special. He is just so potent in front of goal. City still waste too many chances in games, but that wouldn't happen if they fell to him.

You get the feeling he is available too, despite being under contract at Dortmund. If City went all out to sign Haaland, I reckon a deal could happen.

Like Mbappe, though, he would not come cheap.

'Put him anywhere in City's system and he'd be immense'
The third man on my City wish-list is not a striker like Mbappe and Haaland, but the way Pep has his team playing, he would be a natural fit.

I've known Jack Grealish since I joined Aston Villa in 2015 and he stood out even then as a teenager, but at 25 he is a much better player now - and he would be perfect for City's system.

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Grealish has scored six goals and made 10 assists in 24 Premier League appearances for Villa this season. He has created 76 chances in total - a chance every 26.59 PL minutes played - only Kevin de Bruyne of Emirates Marketing Project (26.18) has a better ratio and only Manchester United's Bruno Fernandes (94) and Chelsea's Mason Mount (82) have made more chances
You could put Jack in City's front three on the left, right or as a false nine - or further back in midfield - anywhere, really, and he would be immense.

He was absolutely brilliant for Villa this season before injuries sidelined him but I think he would go to the next level at City.

If they signed him, their fans would soon be thinking 'why didn't we get him earlier?' because he would give them something different, even with the top quality players they already have in those positions.

Phil Foden, for example, is a very special talent but I don't think even he could do quite what Jack has done at Villa in the past few months.

You know Foden can turn quickly with the ball, burst away from players and then look for the pass. It's what makes him so exciting to watch.

But part of the reason he plays so well for City is because of the players he has around him - he always has runners going this way and that, providing him with options and giving him space.

Whereas with Jack at Villa, he always has to make something happen on his own, and often does. He can turn a game on its head with his dribbling as well as his delivery, and he is just top notch in tight spaces.

Foden is exceptional and he is going to be one of the main men for City for years to come but there is room for Jack as well.

Whether they get Mbappe, Haaland or a different striker altogether, I'd still love to see Jack in this City team and the best thing about it is that I can actually see them trying to sign him too.
 
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