Reviewing Rafa - Previewing City

The question I was asking myself before sitting down to watch Benitez's press conference was will I learn anything from this? Surprisingly the answer was yes. The most obvious point from the conference was that Benitez is still unable to pronounce the word "club" and insisted on calling Chelsea a "massive cloob", I am still trying to work out if that is another insult or not. Many Chelsea fans like myself watching that press conference were no doubt feeling very uncomfortable watching Benitez holding up a Chelsea shirt and will find it very difficult to come around to the idea of him being with us.

Obviously the press were going to ask the direct questions. How does he feel about joining a club where he is not wanted by the fans? Remember those comments you made about Chelsea and their fans years ago? Neither question was answered in any real way other than to turn it in another direction but then again what else could he say? But the most important thing that came across to me from his press conference was that he does truly believe that he will only be here for the remainder of this season and not beyond. There was absolutely no talk of looking beyond the season. Why would he take the job then? Well this is a man who is looking to prove that he can still cut it at a big club. THAT he made perfectly clear, he wants to manage a big club and after being sacked from first Liverpool and then Inter his reputation was somewhat dented. For him this is an opportunity to show he can still manage at the top end and put himself in the window for the summer. But for me it was clear that he does not see himself here beyond his 7 month contract and that in itself is something of a relief.

Honestly I don't think Benitez has managed to endear himself to Chelsea fans on his first press conference but that was always going to be a tough, virtually impossible ask, made even harder by the rather unpopular move of appointing Boudewijn Zenden to his coaching staff. Benitez needs to win games if he is to calm the waters among the Chelsea fans and he has a big chance to that already this Sunday.

Manchester City come to the bridge this weekend, neither team playing at their best for sure at the moment but one thing is very clear to me and that is if we continue to play as we have been we will get beaten easily by City. City have the strike force to hurt us and if we give the space we have been giving teams lately it will be all too easy for them. So how does Benitez get us playing again? He said he has been able to identify areas that we need to improve and make small tweaks, unfortunately he did not say in any way what those changes are and the esteemed members of the English media seem to struggle when it comes to actual football discussion so not one of them pressed him on this point.

What I would like to see is us pressing City all over the park, denying them space and then when we get the ball we need to get at them and make their somewhat fragile defense work and make chances on goal. Of course we have the ability to beat city but it will need to see everyone working hard together to get that result. But now it all comes down to what Benitez will do.

So we will have to see. What formation will Benitez play with this squad? How will he utilize our attacking players while keeping us strong at the back? One thing is for sure the tempo of our play needs to increase, but how will the players respond to Benitez? So many questions asked on such a big game for us, we need to win to keep us close to the two Manchester Clubs. What will also be interesting is the reaction of the fans at the bridge, there have been mentions of protests including a concourse walkout on 16 minutes but as much as feelings will still be running high over what has happened this week the fans will be wanting our team to do well on the pitch.