Surprised, he hasn't featured much, especially when you consider Navas started ahead of him yesterday.
Our Rivals' squads next year - Manchester City (2016/2017)
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Surprised, he hasn't featured much, especially when you consider Navas started ahead of him yesterday.
Sterling has been anonymous against half decent fullbacks.
Too many PL managers have fell for the Pep hyperbole at the start of the season. This coupled with a lot of iffy decisions has allowed them to build up a decent points total. Celtic would struggle for a top 10 finish in the PL but were still unlucky not to get the win against City. As much as it pains me to say it Brenton has shown the way to many of the teams in the PL on how to beat them.
Most PL managers should also know by now that Bravo is highly erratic. It's easy for a keeper to play with his feet when he is under little pressure as he was at Barca. Not so easy in the PL, especially when opponents specifically target you. It took Jose 40 Mins of the Derby to realize he was a weak link. The message should be loud & clear to the rest of the PL.
You would seriously have to consider that something dodgy is going on if any team goes into a game with City sitting deep & playing on the counter, as we all know that's not the way to beat them.
I agree with your post totally, but what do you mean with the bolded bit?
Some teams don't feel that they have enough to beat City and think they will get thrashed if they try, so they play for a draw, hoping to keep City out with a packed defence and maybe nick a goal at the other end. It's a reasonable enough tactic.
And some teams don't have the players and fitness levels to press City high up the pitch and keep it up for most of the match without getting exhausted and so being over-run in the 2nd half. Again, for those teams it's a reasonable enough tactic to not try a pressing game and to sit back somewhat, conserving their energy.
I don't see anything dodgy about it.
As the previous few posts pointed out, if you give them too much respect they will slaughter you (United vs City, first half)
Whereas if you press and put pressure on their back 5, they can't cope with it and you will punish them (United vs City, second half).
Whereas if you press and put pressure on their back 5, they can't cope with it and you will punish them (United vs City, second half).
Not many teams are going to go to WHL and get any points there. We all knew the PL was going to be tough. I think all the teams will go through 1 or 2 blips this season.
City played on the break in the second half without a striker. If City played that second half with Aguero, then maybe a fresh Iheanacho for the last 15 minutes, they score 1-2 more given the opportunities they were given and win easily. Pressing high will always carry both risks and rewards and they just happened not to have the squad in place to properly punish United, despite many opportunities.
Pressing City may be a good tactic for many teams but the idea that this is some massive Achilles heel that will prove to be their undoing now that it has been revealed is wishful thinking of the highest order.
That simple,eh?
Spurs and United have much better squads than most other PL teams and have the wherewithal to choose how to set up against us. Not everybody has that luxury.
That's way too simplistic a comment. United hardly created many chances in the second half against City for one, and we looked more dangerous on the counter. Spurs are one of the best teams in England at pressing and yesterday we failed to deal with it. I've seen plenty of occasions where we've been hounded by the opposition and just passed it around them and created a promising attack in the process. It's not as simple as saying 'press them and win, sit back and lose'. Sunderland sat back and almost nicked a point, Gladbach in the CL pressed us and lost 4-0.
And yet, Celtic did alright...
They played without a striker as they were being penned into their own half. Pep had to bring on defenders to try to hold onto the lead. The only reason City had chances on the counter was because we were going gung ho for the equalizer. If the ref had made the right decision on the Bravo incident it's highly likely we'd have scored a few more goals. City would have had all men behind the ball after the sending off & would not even have been thinking about trying to counter.
Our main presser in the Derby was Rooney & anyone can see how slow he now is. There are much quicker & sharper players in most other PL teams. It's crazy to think that no other PL team apart from Spurs & Liverpool are going to be able to play a high pressing game. The only problem is that lot's of teams outside the top 6 may decide to preserve their energy & give City the win.
Celtic at home in CL go up a notch from their norm as well you know.
Stoke and West Ham both tried it for a portion of the match against us this season. Guess what happened?
If you don't have forwards/AM's athletic and disciplined enough to effectively operate a high press then they will merely be bypassed by Bravo/Stones/Kolarov/Dinho etc. leaving their colleagues horribly exposed.
It's not easy to press well but it's easy to get it wrong and be exposed.
To be honest I think City took Celtic lightly, started with the wrong mindset and it's difficult to pick it up when that happens.
You have to be very brave to press well, see a heat map of where Walker and Rose played yesterday and the amount of times those 2 won the ball in the other half isn't for half hearted teams, do it without full commitment or without doing it at the right times and together and City will pick you off at will.
Spurs got it right yesterday but we still had to be at our best to pull it off.
It took a dodgy penalty call from the ref to get you on your way against Stoke. As for the other game, West Ham were coming back into the match & the more likely team to score. If the correct decision had been made in regards to Aguero the result would have been different. As it was both these sides were in bottom of the table form at the time of your fixtures. The tactics they employed had no bearing on the results.
Yesterday was your first test of a decent side taking it to you for 90 Mins. There were no controversial decisions by the ref & both teams were missing important players. It has to be said that even the most ardent City fan would have to agree you failed miserably.
Win easily? Fecking hell
I wonder why you wouldn't give credit to Spurs... Do I perhaps smell an Arsenal fan?!Win easily? Fecking hell
Err, my comment had nothing to do with Spurs. They deserve lots of credit.
Happy to see City destroyed by Tottenham.
One thing it showed clearly was that Pep has no plan B. All he could hope for was for Spur's level to drop after the break. It didn't, the 2nd half was pretty much the same, and they were lucky not to concede more.
Pep's post match comments pretty much confirms this. They got outdone by Spurs at their own high-pressing and high-tempo game, and he just accepted losing to the better team. He had no clue how to turn the match around at half time.
Pep's post match comments pretty much confirms this. They got outdone by Spurs at their own high-pressing and high-tempo game, and he just accepted losing to the better team. He had no clue how to turn the match around at half time.
You can say that about any manager when he loses a game. Has Zidane a plan B, given that Madrid can't buy a win for 4 games in a row now? Had Mourinho a plan B when Watford were outplaying United? Had Klopp a plan B when Burnley surprised them? This notion of not having a plan B is a very cheap criticism most of the time. If anything, Guardiola showed vs United that he has a plan B as he readjusted their tactics in the second half towards a more pragmatic approach and managed to win the game. Sometimes the opposition are just better and no plan, no matter whether B, C or D is going to work out.
What if Mou chooses to sit back vs Liverpool and loses? Would this mean that he had no plan B?
Guardiola's problems are different: almost half of their starting XI are about 30 y.o. and some of them are a bit average (Zabaleta, Kolarov), Silva is not the same player, and they are heavily dependent on KDB. Besides, second choice players like Fernando and Navas, who had to replace KDB and Nolito vs Spurs, are very unimpressive. Having aging players is a big problem for a team that is supposed to use high pressure and outrun the opposition. Spurs were fitter and better on the day and were more clinical with their chances (apart from the pen). No plan would change that fact.
Throw in the fact that the Argentine has been at the helm of his project for nearly 2 1/2 years
Is this paddy power fan denial thing all made up?
Is calling him his nationality an insult? Bit confused.
I meant to say that Pep does not have a plan B if they are losing. Him and Wenger are examples of managers who will just do more of the same and hope that they get a better outcome.
That's not to belittle Pep's plan A though. I think it will succeed against most teams, most of the time. To suggest that Spurs won simply because their players were fitter and faster, is to overlook the fact that they were also tactically and technically excellent, and the whole team executed their game plan perfectly. Had they been truly clinical, they would have doubled that scoreline. City were outplayed, and Pep didn't even know how to try anything different.
He has shades of Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid. He is definitely building something special at Spurs.
He tried to change things in the second half with bringing in Gundogan and Iheanacho. And they had good chances to score, Aguero nearly made it 2:1 before the pen and Iheanacho had a good chance as well. Generally, City looked better than in the first half. But when you are 2 goals behind, without your main creative force in KDB and with a very impotent second choice player like Navas, and when you get outrun, you must be a miracle worker to instantly change things with some genius plan B. Obviously, sometimes you can't significantly change things no matter what you try: the opposition is just better.
Crazy, there's really no comparison...
Simeone won the Europa League in his his first season at Atletico.
Won the Copa del Rey and Super Cup in his second.
Won La Liga in his third season and reached the CL final.
Pochettino is into his third season and has won absolutely nothing with Spuds, during a stint where Foxes won the PL.
I like Pochettino, and I don't mind Spuds, but his achievements there given his resources aren't really that notable.
He needs to win something this season to be deserving of some of the hype that's being proliferated - same with Klopp at Liverpool.
No they genuinely don't like him, when he was at Espanyol he would call Espanyol the club of the real Catalans and Barcelona not so.
I don't think anyone's saying that he's yet achieved anything like what Simeone's achieved, but some comparisons are fair.
I think it's also fair to say that when Simeone arrived at Atletico they had more recent successes than Tottenham when Pochettino arrived. They'd won the Europa League, and won the Spanish league in the nineties, and the second division in 2001-02, whereas Tottenham have had a fairly comfortable position just behind the top English teams for quite a while (and before that fairly comfortably in the midfield), but seldom threatened more. I think that sort of position can be more difficult to change than Atletico's volatility. Under Pochettino, though, it looks like it might be changing.
Owwwww, completely forgot the guy you replied to is a Barca fan.
He does, there are similarities, definitely
He's not an Argentine?
His time in the Primera saw him coach a dirty side, part of that was the club/players & certainly part was due to him
Which mod gave you that tag FCB?
First time I've noticed it.Which mod gave you that tag FCB?
I don't recall, it was quite recently - during some banter between City & United supporters, here & at BlueMoon
Aargh, ok
How you been though? All good?
I'm good, you? Just back from a vacation, disconnected and good time with the kids & wife
All good this side bud. Good to hear man. Welcome back to the real world again
Let me stop derailing the thread. See you around.
Aargh, ok
How you been though? All good?
He was called more of a rag than a City man because he has 11,000+ posts here as opposed to his 800 posts over there