Exactly. Same with Pep
Man City's inevitable Treble
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The difference being that there's a clear-cut best cyclist ever, which isn't the case for football coaches. So one could make a case for Pep being the best ever using subjective criteria.
Realistically, he will be largely regarded as the greatest if he keeps winning trophies in dominant fashion and adds a couple CLs to his resume.
Pep has a strong argument for being the best ever though. Be it amongst his peers, players and football followers.
And the comparison doesn't hold because Armstrong was juicing his body directly. Pep isn't doping his players before they face other teams on the pitch, at least there isn't any such confirmation for all i know.
Is this the same Akanji and Ake that were not rated as elite before the start of this season?
Revisionism. Back up full backs in Lewis and Gomez? City aren't stocked with world class back ups in all positions. Phillips? C'mon. The reality is that City have a small squad of top class players, then supplement with youth and lower class reserves.
Just look at their subs bench most times. I mean, I saw Carlton Palmer on the bench vs Madrid for example. Let's not do this.
It's up to us now
Would be one hell of a way for Wout to finally make a contribution and sign off though
i swear if he scores the winning goal in the fa cup final against city and prevents them winning treble, he can stay and have a statue outside old Trafford to boot. Feck it they can even rename stretford end.
By that logic, we have an amazing squad, too. Sadly, cost alone is no guarantee of anything.
It’s the same thing - more akin to Armstrong jacking up his bike to have an advantage over his peers. Or better yet, committing financial fraud to get a better bike than his competitors. Would be lovely (Keegan style) to see his Barcelona and City get the punishment they deserve for flouting the rules to get an advantage.
Argument shmargument. Some people even argued C Ronaldo to be the best player ever which was also silly and depended on Messi winning the WC to apparently die. Pep is a great manager - if you are a front runner or have a brilliant base, and want someone to get that working like clockwork. He goes to comfortable conditions and admittedly excels in them. But he doesn’t truly build things or achieve the unlikely / impossible like SAF, to a lesser extent Klopp or even Jose at times did.This season will be one of his best but even here the chap needed a seemingly one off freak goal poacher to be added on top of his already 90 point team, to get there. It’s nothing like our treble or what Liverpool could have but thankfully didn’t do last year.
I‘m not arguing against the financial doping argument but that was pure brilliance against Real Madrid - rarely seen (Pep‘s CL final against Utd comes to mind) - and to some extent I’m even grateful for being able to watch it.
In other news: Bayern did build its foundations on shady (=illegal) payments in the 70s to get an edgeover over their competitors and who knows what really happened between Dreyfus, Hoeness and Bayern as the jurisdiction was pretty quick to dismiss any follow up questions that potentially could have lead someplace else than the private person Ulrich Hoeness, they do have a Qatari sponsorship and yet they still get widely praised for their respectavle business. So I already grew a bit shaded to the „opera“ professional football represents.
But feck me, seeing such a beautiful display of footbal on the pitch at least has some inspiring moment (especially as I personally see rather many players that seem kinda likable on the pitch, Dias, Stones, Akanji, KdB, Silva, Alvarez, Gündogan..Rodri as well). If you think about all the money being wasted in this circus altogether I also think there is some merit to what City build in a rather short era.
In other news: Bayern did build its foundations on shady (=illegal) payments in the 70s to get an edgeover over their competitors and who knows what really happened between Dreyfus, Hoeness and Bayern as the jurisdiction was pretty quick to dismiss any follow up questions that potentially could have lead someplace else than the private person Ulrich Hoeness, they do have a Qatari sponsorship and yet they still get widely praised for their respectavle business. So I already grew a bit shaded to the „opera“ professional football represents.
But feck me, seeing such a beautiful display of footbal on the pitch at least has some inspiring moment (especially as I personally see rather many players that seem kinda likable on the pitch, Dias, Stones, Akanji, KdB, Silva, Alvarez, Gündogan..Rodri as well). If you think about all the money being wasted in this circus altogether I also think there is some merit to what City build in a rather short era.
Lots of jeopardy too. The FA Cup semi was epic.
City's first half against Real was stunning but lacked that emotive factor.
Erm, City's bench had Foden, Mahrez, Alvarez, Laporte and Kalvin Phillips. All internationals and a world cup winner.
Transfermarket values them at a combined £255m
That is price of 95% of the squads in the PL, just sitting on your bench.
I think City will win the treble. They have the best team in Europe right now, so it's deserved. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a team without any soul at all. And they are the worst example of sports washing in the world of football.
You've proven my point. City started the season with a small squad of top class players, the first 11, plus Laporte, Foden and Mahrez. Nobody at the beginning of the season called Phillips and Alvarez top class. You can add first teamers Akanje and Ake too. They weren't called top class. They have become that during the season. City then have Cole Palmer, Rico Lewis, Gomez and so forth to supplement the rest of the squad. It is not a squad full of 2 top players in every position, as was the narrative for ages.
I think not only will they win the treble, but I can see them dominating the CL for a few years like Madrid did. I mean, other than liverpool, who can really challenge this City side in Europe?
I think this is a bit premature. In cup competituons, it is not always the best team that wins. If it was, City would probably have a CL already to be fair. Without wanting to belittle Real, you always need that little bit of luck to win the CL and they had it many times over the last decade.
And I also expect Madrid, Barca, Liverpool, United, Chelsea, PSG, Bayern and a few others to signficantly improve in the upcoming years since they all are in a transition phase. Plus Arsenal already was very good this season as well. City might be favourites going into every single one of this fixtures but a CL run usually means you have to beat three or four of those opponents. Assume they beat all other favourites with a probability of 70%, then 70%^3 still is only ~35%.
Bayern, they have the talent they just need a competent coach. Real Madrid is in transition and they need a good coach, Barca is broke and I don’t rate Xavi so they will need a few years, EPL teams only Liverpool and United but ETH needs more time.
Then the 2 other oil state clubs, PSG and Newcastle but they need a lot more structure.
So Bayern and Liverpool in the near term, Real, Barca, United and the 2 oil states clubs in the longer term
Luck... Outrageous ref decisions.. you say tomayto I say tomato.
Transfer thread on Akanji: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/manuel-akanji.469058/
Thread on Ake: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/nathan-ake-close-to-signing-for-man-city-£40m-fee.456009/page-2
Akanji wasn't rated much as an option for us. Ake was labeled as a flop as late as last season (battling with injury)
It's just funny how narratives change.
You surely need luck but playing 11 semifinals in 13 editions means the level of consistency has been tremendous. And other than this season result against City - which had to happen at some point anyway when the main players had their decline- all defeats in semifinals were by small margins. So at the end of the day if you focus on it from the statistical point of view it was not completely illogical to win it so often.
If City can reach this base in years to come, well we'll probably see it in 15 years time.
No doubt, Real Madrid has been tremendous in the CL this last decade. Still, you always need luck in knockout competitions. I'd say if you are the far better team in a knockout tie, then your chance to go through is maybe at 70%. 3 ties like that in a cup and you're already at 35% winning chance which translates to a title roughly every three years. Which makes it incredibly difficult to win so many in a row and that also explains why Guardiola hasn't won a CL since his Barca days despite his teams usually being top 3 in the world.
You are not far off it. And you have certain players that can play in different positions, like Foden and Stones can drop into central midfield. There's 20 players available.
Haaland >> Alvarez
Grealish >> Foden
Silva >> Mahrez
DeBruyne >> Foden can play here
Gundogon >> Foden can play here
Rhodri >> Phillips
Diaz >> Akanji
Stones >> Laporte
Cancello >> Ake
Walker >> Lewis
Ederson >> Ortega
Things can change quickly. Bayern looked like an unstoppable superteam in 2013 but didn't win the Champions League again until 2020. Barcelona never managed to retain the trophy despite having Messi for well over a decade.
Why do you think I give a flying rat's arse about the opinions of supporters. Are you new to football? This is what supporters do when their rival buys a player.
This is not a good parallel as we did not have the coaching or qualified people making decisions on transfers. A good number of players we bought were significantly worse with us because of the lack of coaching and structure. If we're on that subject however, if a player isn't working out at City they can sell him for a loss no questions asked. Very few teams have that luxury.
Rated by who? Let's not lump we in with a general consensus to suit your argument.
But... that's exactly my point. That a third of the players sitting on City's bench costing 50m or more is no guarantee of anything and definitely no indication of an unbeatable supersquad - we should know that better than anyone. A structure and coaching and all that are required.
City could not have assembled such a good squad without breaking the FFP rules. But any of the established top clubs could have! Why didn't they? It's not an unrealistically good or big squad for a top club. I just had a quick peek at Real Madrid's 2012/13 squad:
Varane, Pepe, Ramos, Ricardo Carvalho, Arbeloa, Marcelo, Coentrao, Albiol, Khedira, Özil, Xabi Alonso, Essien, Modric, Di Maria, Kaká, Híguain, Benzema, Ronaldo, Morata - look at this shit. fecking insane. They also had a young Casemiro and a young Fabinho but at 21 and 19, respectively, they couldn't get a sniff. And this squad won feck all that season.
I honestly cant understand why all these daft pundits are claiming that City winning the treble would be a bigger achievement than Man Utd winning it in 99, it was a lot more difficult to do when Man Utd won it in comparison to this year.
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And that was done in style and excitement. We played every good team in both cups. City have bored their way to a potential treble. Feck em anyway, it’s already been done. People have forgotten the second team to climb Mount Everest.
Yup. Bayern 19-20 are also another good example as they were unstoppable after Flick's appointment, much like this City team they just rolled through every competition that spring and nobody could touch them. Yet the following year their league formed dropped off (although they still won it), they lost in the 2nd round of the cup, and were knocked out in the CL quarters by PSG. Its really really hard to maintain this kind of untouchable level.
That’s because they’re clueless morons who are still bitter about the amount of success Utd have had over the years at their expense and are desperate to take the shine off our achievements in any way possible. Recency bias also plays a huge part these days as well.
They all seem to ignoring the fact that Man Utd didnt have the luxury of having 2 good players for every position like City do, the Premier League was a lot stronger then with more teams capable of taking points off them, in the FA Cup they had to go through 5 different Premier League teams (Boro, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Newcastle) to win it, and in the Champions League were put in the hardest group (with Brondby, Barcelona, and Bayern Munich) then after that had to play 3 teams (Inter, Bayern, and Barcelona) who were all probably better than the sides City have faced this season.
All that is very true but you don’t even need to go into the details to know how much of a bigger achievement it is for the simple reason of we won a treble legitimately and City if they do manage to equal it it’s through the aid of cheating and corrupt means. The fact a club has had to resort to that over 20 years on to even match it tells you how big of an achievement it was for Man Utd which will never be taken away no matter how much they try.
Who cares? They've been cheating for the last decade. None of this really counts. feck them.
Even if they manage a treble, it actually feels empty. Probably why I’m less bothered.
Obviously prefer someone stopping this, but if not…does it even count? Empty victory…not even comparable to ‘99
Obviously prefer someone stopping this, but if not…does it even count?
Empty victory…not even comparable to ‘99Name the 2 players in every position without doubling up.
We'll go with these 11 positions as they are most common. gk, rb, lb, cb, cb, dm, mc, mc, rw, lw, st.
Gk Ederson - Stefan Ortega - Scott Carson
Rb Kyle Walker - Joao Cancelo
Lb Rico Lewis -Sergio Gomez
CB Ruben Dias - Nathan Ake - John Stones
CB Aymeric Laporte - Manuel Akanje
DM Rodri - Calvin Phillips
CM Ikay Gundogdun -Miximo Perrone
CM Bernardo Silva - Cole Palmer
RW Ryad Mahrez - Kevin De Bruyne
LW Jack Grealish - Phil Foden
ST Erling Haaland - Julian Alvarez
So, nothing really out of the ordinary then. We are very lucky to have two fantastic young strikers, but one was a cheap punt. We have very good depth in the centre of the pitch, but almost no depth to speak of in the full back departement, to the point were we don't use them. Rodri, Bernardo, Gundogan and De Bruyne is fantastic options for three spots but beyond them Phillips has properly flopped hard so far and Perrone is very young and has very few minutes in Europe under his belt.
Go back a year and everyone said Liverpool had more depth than us.
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Why is Foden benched so often this season?
Got ill while he was in super form, came back to a settled team with Grealish performing brilliantly and Pep usually stops rotating too much in the business end of the season. I think he is our best right winger but Pep seems to avoid playing him there. He is also probably the easiest pick to bench here and there because of his association to the club. I personally think he should start every game though, but I know nothing
People claiming this City side are greater than the '99 team are, in my view, missing that probably the essence of sport is the stories that get told through it.
Whilst the '99 team weren't necessarily the underdogs, there's still some absolutely brilliant stories that you can tell about it, such as the Class of '92 or the comebacks against Arsenal and Bayern. Stuff like this makes what that team achieved feel that much more special.
I'm not going to lie, I don't even fecking know what story you'd tell about City. It's like the most boring, predictable fairytale ever.
Whilst the '99 team weren't necessarily the underdogs, there's still some absolutely brilliant stories that you can tell about it, such as the Class of '92 or the comebacks against Arsenal and Bayern. Stuff like this makes what that team achieved feel that much more special.
I'm not going to lie, I don't even fecking know what story you'd tell about City. It's like the most boring, predictable fairytale ever.
You can literally field a 2nd XI thats better than most other Premier League club's first XI.