Match Preview – Manchester City v Brighton

Manchester City – the team
Manchester City haven’t had a bad season, all things considered. They haven’t just won the Premier League title this season, but could do it by smashing every record going. They equalled the earliest that the championship has ever been wrapped up by winning it with five games to spare and have already set the longest winning run having notched up 18 consecutive victories earlier in the season. If they defeat the Albion at the Etihad then they will break the record points total of 95 and have recorded the most number of wins in a season with 31; two goals will set a new record of 104 scored while they could also surpass the largest winning margin of 18 points. The only thing that has stopped Pep Guardiola’s side from having the perfect season has been their cup performances with elimination to Liverpool in the semi final of the Champions League and Wigan Athletic in the fifth round of the FA Cup. Hopefully Chris Hughton has picked Christian Walton’s brains on how to defeat them given that he is one of only three goalkeepers to have tasted victory over City this season alongside David De Gea and Loris Karius.

Manchester – the place
Having not played away in Manchester since 1992, we’ve now been treated to three games in the city inside of six months with two trips to Old Trafford and now this first ever visit to the Etihad Stadium. It’s one of the best cities in the country for a variety of reasons which include it’s pubs, it’s tram network and giving the world Coronation Street.

Manchester – the people
While their rivals United attract celebrity supporters from across the world, City’s reputation as the club that real Mancunians support is upheld by their famous fans. Noel and Liam Gallagher are arguably the most notable but you also have Ricky Hatton, Bernard Manning, Andrew Flintoff and Curly Watts from Corrie. Alan Rickman was also a City supporter which, given the Citizens lack of success through the 1990’s, makes it no surprise that Severus Snape was a moody little bastard throughout most of the Harry Potter series.

A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Manchester City away
With this being our first visit to Manchester City since 1988, we’re part of the generation who have never seen Brighton away against the champions. We have previously done one evening game followed by a night out in Manchester, when Great Britain faced Senegal at Old Trafford in the 2012 Olympics. After the 1-1 draw, we stumbled across a fantastic night club packed with students which allowed one member of the WeAreBrighton.com team to pose as an undercover police officer and start asking drinkers for their ID. Incredibly, they did this despite the fact said “officer” was carrying around two cans of Red Stripe at the time.

A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Manchester City away
The next morning was particularly horrific as those Red Stripe and £2 Jaegerbombs caught up with us to leave the bathroom looking like a scene that was cut from Alien for being too graphic.

Played for both
There was great excitement when the Albion announced the double loan signing of Abdul Razak and Gai Assulin from City in early 2012. Razak was supposed to be the next Yaya Toure while Assulin was a Barcelona whizz kid who would tear up the Championship. In typical Brighton fan style, everybody got worked up into a frenzy about these two being the two best signings Gus Poyet had ever made but it soon became clear that they weren’t and both were very quickly binned off after an insipid display in a 0-0 draw at Doncaster Rovers.

Dangermen
Where to start with this one? When you’ve got a squad costing more than the GDP of a small African nation as Guardiola has, then you’ve obviously got danger men everywhere. Sergio Aguero scores goals, Kevin De Bruyne has looked like the best midfielder in the world this season, Vincent Kompany is a multi-time Premier League winner (who has also lost a game of football at Withdean), Kyle Walker is the most expensive right back in the world. Essentially, our only hope is that City have taken their foot off the pedal and that certainly looked the case when they drew 0-0 with Huddersfield at the weekend. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long evening.

Betting
We’ve only scored nine goals away from home all season and the Etihad Stadium probably isn’t the place that will change. Fill your boots with City clean sheet and City to win to nil while at the same time backing under 2.5 goals – we’ve only conceded more than two once on our travels and that was in that freakish defeat to Crystal Palace in which the back four and Maty Ryan collectively lost their minds.

Prediction
A comfortable 2-0 win for City. They can smash a few more records and we can have a bit of a party celebrating survival while watching one of the finest teams in Premier League history. And then go out and ID some students in a club while drinking £2 Red Stripe and Jaeger.