MCFC training report 05/12/2011

Not exactly warm today. The first out were Clichy and Lescott and almost immediately the hail started battering down. Lescott seemed to find it funny but Gael just said something about Manchester! 10 watchers inside the fence today. Made me smile as they trudged across the training area in the rain, hail and wind and most of them not in anyway dressed for the weather.

So here's 4 questions to start with.

First an easy one, who was the only player who wore shorts with no head gear on?

Who was the only other wearing shorts?

Who was the only other player with no head gear on ( albeit only for a short time)?

Which player came out and walked across to the training pitch with a brolly?

After the initial gathering for Mancini to have a chat they broke off into two groups for a few of the regular routines to warm up. Mancini did a bit of his man management here and had a chat with AJ before he joined a group. Just as he did with Nasri at the end of Friday's session. Let's hope it has the same effect although to be fair to AJ he did well in his sub appearance against Norwich.

Mostly the warm up sessions involved quick touch passing and only minimal physical work. Keep ball circles as well as circles with 2 in the middle where it was all about passing in and out with plenty of movement and pace. Then into a game of pass and move but with two teams and just 2 touches allowed. This one gets quite competitive but it didn't last long before they switched to 10 a side game.

Costel was in the net near me so I congratulated him on the Arse game and asked why he wasn't in shorts like the one other player? After a thank you he just said "he is a crazy man". Barry got the game going with a lovely goal. He scores regularly in training and I wonder how many he would score in games if he was given the licence to get forward a lot more. Edin equalised with a clever toe poke (where have I seen that before) but after he had done very well to get past a defender to the edge of the 6 yard box.

Then Nasri scored with a quality finish and he was definitely continuing his good play that we saw on Saturday. Aguero then pounced on a loose ball to score with the outside of his right foot.Classic strikers finish. Then quite suddenly Mancini called it a day. No need for too much to keep them ticking and every minute there has to be a risk of injury. There were a couple of minor worries but the players shrugged them off and carried on.

As they all went in Mancini kept Lescott back with Mario for a little work/chat. Looked like it was about some defensive aspects as Lescott seemed to be the focus and Mario was just the attacker to demonstrate movements. Maybe all about how to deal with Gomez.