Manchester City vs Chelsea
Premier League
Sunday
21st May 2023
Etihad Stadium
Manchester City vs Chelsea: Manchester City qualified for the Champions League final on Wednesday and hopes to celebrate again on Sunday. If Pep Guardiola’s side win against Chelsea, they will be champions of England again. The decision may even be made a day earlier, but Guardiola does not hope for that.
Championship point for Manchester City: Guardiola comes with a special comparison
City is four points ahead of pursuers Arsenal and also has a game in hand. If Arsenal lose to Nottingham Forest on Saturday, City will win the title. Guardiola, however, fingers crossed for the pursuer’s success: “I would prefer to win myself to become champion. But we have no influence on what happens in Nottingham,” Guardiola said at his press conference on Friday. “It doesn’t matter what happens. We just have to do our job.”
City has been unstoppable lately, but that does not mean that Guardiola already counts himself rich. Before the championship game, he came up with a special comparison: “Tennis players always say that the serve to win Wimbledon is the most difficult,” said the Spaniard. “On Sunday we have the chance to win the most important competition. That’s the competition, yes, because it’s about ten to eleven months. We’re lucky to have the chance to finish it at home. We must seize that opportunity.”
Prolonging the league title would be City’s first step towards a possible treble. As is known, Guardiola’s team also plays the Champions League final and has also qualified for the FA Cup final. Manchester United is the opponent on June 3. A week later, Internazionale is waiting in Istanbul.
Guardiola can become the first coach ever to win the treble with two different teams. He took the three most important trophies in a single season ever before with Barcelona, in the 2008/09 season.
Lampard’s plan to stop Haaland
Lampard’s admiration for the Premier League’s top scorer has not diminished. “I like to see players with that level, that personality and that hunger. To stop him you need a plan and an idea, but players like him can always make something happen. We’ll have to be at our best,” he said.
That’s an understatement. Chelsea kept a clean sheet in away fixtures in exactly three games this season. The result, despite astronomical transfer spending, is 11th in the table and the certainty that Stamford Bridge will not see any European football next season. So in Manchester there is only honour to save.