Portimonense preview

The hastily arranged trip came about after the cancellation of the tour to Malaysia and because Portimonense had cancelled a game against Nottingham Forest today, the teams were able to arrange a game.

Portimonense have just been promoted to the Portuguese 1st division and have brought in several new players for the coming season. They are based in Portimao on the Algarve, a region of Southern Portugal but tonight's game is being played in the district of Albufeira, one of the most intense tourist areas in the region.

Portugal has served City well over the past few years with the Bluebirds winning the Algarve Cup in 2008 (only ever held once) by beating Celtic in the final. Ironically the winning goal scored by Joe Ledley.

For City it's a second pre season game. The first, a 2 - 0 win at Bath City 9 days ago saw the full squad get a run out including new keeper Tom Heaton, on loan Danny Drinkwater and triallist Bryan Hughes. We will find out this evening if Jones has any other triallists with him in Portugal.

Three players have stayed behind in Cardiff. Aaron Wildig, Solomon Taiwo and Miguel Comminges are all recovering from injuries. Comminges is with City for 6 more months to regain fitness while Taiwo was close to a move to Norwich before it fell through. I don't expect either player to feature too much for City as the season commences.

So the rest of the squad including all the senior players have been training hard during the week in Portugal (visit the official website for pictures from training each day) and they are looking forward to action this evening against decent opposition.

"Everybody has worked hard during our time in Portugal," said skipper Mark Hudson. "We have worked on tactics and team shape.

"There are going to be a few different bits and bobs from last season."

Defender Mark Kennedy is itching to play again.

Mark Kennedy

"We can't wait to get out there and play," he told the official webiste.

"You do all your running and fitness training of course, but you want to put it into practice in games."

"It's very different playing foreign opposition. Portimonense will be very skilful and are sure to give us a good workout. It's very important to keep hold of the ball in these games as the opposition will fizz it around and make it difficult for you to get back.

"We're all looking forward to the challenge."

Next Saturday City are away At Notts County and the following week at home to Deportivo La Coruna. Then it's the real thing with the start of the NPower Championship.

Portimonense SC v Cardiff City
Saturday July 17th, ko 7:00pm.