Marking de Bruyne out of the game apparently gets you a two for one special
Nordic Ghost Yeti (Scandi Carroll) | Haaland at City
- Thread starter Samid
- Start date
Has 4 goals in last 6, not bad, but definitely not flying as he did in first 10-15 games.
He will still score plenty, but perhaps teams are finding him out a bit and needs to adapt, perhaps its just a dip in form.
He is a great striker who will score plenty, but not the type who will take the ball and create a goal for himself out of nothing, thats something you need when service dries up at times, Haaland isnt that type of player to do that though.
He will still score plenty, but perhaps teams are finding him out a bit and needs to adapt, perhaps its just a dip in form.
He is a great striker who will score plenty, but not the type who will take the ball and create a goal for himself out of nothing, thats something you need when service dries up at times, Haaland isnt that type of player to do that though.
He didn’t really do much wrong, it’s more that he didn’t do much at all. That’s the problem with players like him and there’s always the risk that teams will work out how to keep him quiet, meaning he’s a complete passenger.
This is the main point. He makes alot of great runs, even today, but noone is looking for him. So strange to see Foden, Bilva and Mahrez not playing him. Grealish and KDB seems to look for him often, but the test dont.
He is still an absolute beats and will be one of the most profilic players for many years to come, i am sure. So hopes he leaves City soon and join you guys so Shaw only needs to stop him in the CL final.
People keep divorcing him from the team. The team performance level has plummeted since the start of the season and a lot of their earned aura is fading now as teams are fancying their chances against them as a collective. It's not a case of Haaland dropping whilst all around him maintain their standard of performance. Pound for pound, he's easily in contention as their best performer of the season, alongside Cancelo, De Bruyne and Rodri. Questions should be asked of the unit before fingers are pointed at Haaland; why is only De Bruyne adept at passing to him? Why don't they have any width? Why do they keep ignoring his runs? And so on and so forth.
He's a weird one, can be a menace in the box but I feel he isn't a game changer. A true flat track bully who'll do great for City but don't know if he could give them the edge in big games.
He looked overweight and ploddy as feck live.
Crazy stat from the Blue Moon thread. Something is badly malfunctioning at City.
I think at some point we will put Alvarez alongside him.
Strikers like Haaland and Nunez coming through is somewhat bringing the old-fashioned poachers back for the top clubs, and in turn it will slowly bring back the two up top-meta back to football, because these guys need supporting strikers close to them. Even the likes of Mbappe is more effective through the middle with some brute like Giroud next to him. 352 and 442 will yet again become the norm.
For us romancing the good old days with little and large partnerships and 4-4-f*cking 2 it is a bit exciting actually
Strikers like Haaland and Nunez coming through is somewhat bringing the old-fashioned poachers back for the top clubs, and in turn it will slowly bring back the two up top-meta back to football, because these guys need supporting strikers close to them. Even the likes of Mbappe is more effective through the middle with some brute like Giroud next to him. 352 and 442 will yet again become the norm.
For us romancing the good old days with little and large partnerships and 4-4-f*cking 2 it is a bit exciting actually
Not gonna lie. Two up top is just better. I’ve been missing it since the “442” chants when Fergie finally cracked European football.
@Samid will be fecking raging that he didn't bang in a hat trick against us today 
Agree, it is long overdue. Had a slight comeback around circa 2013 when we had Aguero-Negredo/Dzeko, you had Rooney/RvP and scousers had Sturridge/Suarez but since then its only really been used as a defensive pressing tactic. But I sense a change coming, the young up and coming progressive managers like Nagelsmann seems to prefer it as well
it’s not even creating chances for himself but he can’t hold the ball up as well so nobody can play off him and get in behind. For large parts of the game they genuinely play with 10 men
Not sure it will be under Guardiola.
Also, I'm not sure Nagelsmann proved it's an overpowered formation, his Bayern team isn't particularly impressive.
He's so fecking ugly. The turd doesn't fall far from the anus.
Good post, he made a lot of good runs today and the ball never came, this has got to be Pep's tactics of playing keep ball and limit the chance of giving the ball away
United were the exact opposite, the forwards made the runs and the passes were attempted, not always successfully, I get the impression that Pep doesn't want any passes that aren't about 95% certain to reach its target
Given our wingers/centre mid struggles and CB issues I wouldn't be against 532 for a bit actually.
-----------------------------------------Ederson-------------------------------------------
---------------------Stones----------Laporte---------Ake---------------------------
Walker-------------------------------------------------------------------------Cancelo
--------------------------------------------Rodri---------------------------------------------
------------------------------------KDB------------Silva-----------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------Alvarez------------Haaland------------------------------
Silva is out of sorts too but whatever.
I was watching that and thinking about the balls Bruno and Eriksen would be pinging through to him. IMO he's much more suited to our style of play than City's.
From Blue Moon Forum
cheekybids said:
He really annoys me. He was annoying me then he would shut me up by scoring a hatrick but now he does nothing.
Since just before the break his movement has been really poor. He turns like the titanic which affects our pressing & has developed a poor touch & hasn’t even looked strong when holding players off.
Im not sure if he’s injured but he’s reminding me of Ronaldo. We all said we wouldn’t want him cos he does feck all but score & yet we put up with this. I wish Madrid would make an offer quick.
cheekybids said:
He really annoys me. He was annoying me then he would shut me up by scoring a hatrick but now he does nothing.
Since just before the break his movement has been really poor. He turns like the titanic which affects our pressing & has developed a poor touch & hasn’t even looked strong when holding players off.
Im not sure if he’s injured but he’s reminding me of Ronaldo. We all said we wouldn’t want him cos he does feck all but score & yet we put up with this. I wish Madrid would make an offer quick.
In fairness to the guy, he made loads of good runs today and just wasn’t picked out. MOTD did a great piece on it in their analysis.
I remember you guys running riot with Aguero and Jesus up front beginning of the 17-18 season.
Think hes completely wasted playing under Guardiola. So many good runs ignored to play 20 passes across their backline instead. Just find it infuriating to watch.
It wasn’t just De Bruyne. Our tactics were to block all the supply line to Haaland inside the box. Mahrez, De Bruyne and Foden were all marked to a certain extent. Just De Bruyne was specifically man-marked. Our strategy was to let Haaland get on the ball and try to be creative. Like - go on son, show us what else are you good at besides being a goal scoring machine.
This exactly right, and what MOTD showed, if Haaland had been playing for us he'd have probably had 5-6 gilt edged chances because our midfilders would have attempted the passes and TBH some were simple thru balls similar to when Eriksen played Rashford in
Not really that. It's how easy he was a nothing factor in the game. Being a poacher he seems to offer nothing if the service is a bit sub par. Despite the crazy goal tally this has happened before in the big games this season too
To me it's not a big problem he's offering nothing on the ball. They've got 10 players great on the ball, how many cooks do you need. You have to get balls into the box and pick out his runs, that's the whole point of having him up front. I think the point is the cooks in midfield and even defence are overcooking the pudding at the moment.
Mahrez didn't look good, Foden was invisible, Grealish wasn't exactly dazzling he just found himself in a position to tuck one away. So you definitely have a team malfunctioning over a handful of matches, Haaland needs service and there was never any mystery around whether he'd be the type of do stuff out of thin air. They're too ponderous to get the attackers shining.
Mahrez didn't look good, Foden was invisible, Grealish wasn't exactly dazzling he just found himself in a position to tuck one away. So you definitely have a team malfunctioning over a handful of matches, Haaland needs service and there was never any mystery around whether he'd be the type of do stuff out of thin air. They're too ponderous to get the attackers shining.
Both him and Grealish would have made much more sense with us
Dont rate Grealish to be honest. Mahrez is the best of their wingers, don't think Guardiola makes especially good use of him either.
He’s a great goal scorer - not a great centre forward. Apart from finishing/being in the right position, the rest of his game is largely anonymous.
Literally got smashed with Kyle Walker in a pub once and he told me Aguero was the best he’s ever played with - ten times better than Kane.
Does feel like Haaland chose the wrong team. He'll score goals there obviously, but Pep is the one manager he probably shouldn't play for. Never gonna have space in behind.
I think if i was his advisor - and not a fan - I probably would have picked Liverpool. Lower expectations, manager who will always play more directly, bigger club. Wages slightly lower I guess, but you can make that up in endorsements. Probably demand a release clause in case it goes to hell there if Klopp is doping.
Similar to he who shall not be named for us. The players around Haaland have regressed and he is shining. Obviously for us it was worse because Bruno and Rashfords form completely fell off.
I agree 442 will return to prominence at some point, tactics cycle in and out fashion. Either classic 442, more narrow 4222 or some amalgamation of the two. Can't see Pep doing it though, he's obsessed with possession.
Hopefully it then leads to having 2 wingers who cross it on their strong foot again.
Having the 2 strikers and 2 wingers then means you need 2 centre mids who can do it all again. Rather than these half a job merchants.
Having 2 mids only means you'll need 2 centre backs who are mostly interested in defending first.
But they'll need their full backs to be able to defend as well.
And then it'll be the glorious mid 90s again.
Ageed. City arent playing to his strengths, which is good for us and rest of premier league.
Remains to be seen if his all round game can improve with age and experience to benzema and leodowski levels.
If I'm honest I think the game has evolved for the better style wise.
I remember in lockdown watching Arsenal vs Chelsea in the UCL quarter final of 2004 and the thing that stuck out to me the most was how simplistic the patterns of play were, and that was the two best teams in the country possibly Europe at the time.
Ofcourse defenders should be able to defend and keepers should be able to catch etc but I do enjoy watching even the so called lesser sides play with more tactical variety these days. These days I go and watch EFL games close to me purely because of the football the teams (close to me) play, back in the 00s I'd only go for days out with friends/family and even then I'd remember it more for the company as apposed to the football.
I still don't think he's a problem, City were moving the ball too slow through midfield, they really had only a few openings. They seemed scared of us on the counter, and reasonably so because we had a few good runs at them in the first half.