Win, Lose or Draw - City Need to Perform

It's funny how football has a nasty habit of kicking you when you're down.

Just when City need an easy game and confidence boosting win to put the disappointment of the Cup exit (and the disappointment of the whole season to be honest), we're up against the mighty Chelsea machine at Eastlands tomorrow night.

Now there's been a lot of speculation of how many games Pearce has left before he gets the bullet, but most football pundits reckon it'll be a case of "G.B.E" - Gone By Easter.

We're clearly going through desperate times at the moment, with performances that wouldn't even be acceptable in Division 1 let alone the top flight, but before the knives get sharpened for tomorrow night, I think we could all do with a reality check about Chelsea game.

At the start of the season when you saw the fixture list, you'd have probably put this game down as an away win with only the most optimistic and probably foolhardy expecting any other result.

I'm expecting us to lose the game, but what I and all the fans want to see from our players is a performance. The players need to earn back some respect from the fans by making sure they turn up focused and motivated. If we've battled hard and fought for everything and still lose to the Champions then I don't really think most fans will have a problem and accept we've lost to a better team.

If we lose timidly with the players having just not turned up again, like so many times this season, then the level of fan disenchantment, which is already nearly off the scale will go up another notch or three.

We shouldn't be surprised if we lose tomorrow, but the performance is everything. I think Pearce understands that, but I'm not so sure about some of the players. We'll find out tomorrow.

I was going to say, wouldn't it just be typical of City to beat Chelsea, but with the way things are at the moment, you wouldn't want to put too much money on it.