You're absolutely correct. The theory is that the fullbacks come inside to help out, or we look like we go 3 at the back and a centre half or full back pushes up. Sadly it hasn't worked on at least 8 occasions this season with the pivot player being outnumbered and bypassed - a good few times due to the shear pace of opposition players breaking against us. This later reason is why I think it won't work too well for Pep going forward regardless of the standard of player we have. Barca and Atletico exposed this against Bayern in the CL over the last two seasons and the pace of Monaco and various players in the Premier League have killed us this season. One of our AMs has to get back quickly to defend when we lose posession - a box-to-box role if you like - when Pep has done this (both Monaco 2nd halves) we have looked much more solid. We also need to be able to switch to a defend in depth mode and hit on the break.to mix things up.
A very good post. Difficult to maintain patience but we have zero option. All we can do is back the club. I steeled myself to read the Times and Mail on Thursday morning but, if anything, I thought they were too kind. Or maybe we have a tendency to be too harsh.
Can't argue with any of this. We have all seen this coming. The team is still too old and were exposed by a brilliant younger side. I am optimistic we will get there. The competition in Europe is getting stronger. Next year we will have an improved PSG, Milan with Chinese money, Plus the usual suspects from Spain. We are playing at the top now and no one gets a free pass. For me we are still years away from a CL final...barring some freak results like when Chelsea won it.
It may be addressed already but I'm struggling with this technicality from wed night. Kun played. I thought his yellow in the first leg ruled him out. Obviously not. Therefore when they showed the names at the start of the game he had no yellow next to his name while sterling and other did. What happened the yellow vs them at home? Did the cheats rescind it after the fact?
The last time I felt this down with City was when Crouch scored the winning goal for Spurs to prevent us from finishing in the top 4.
Monaco was an excellent away trip and hope we get them again in future years. Nice/Monaco - I've definitely been to worse away days. The problem is lay in the Summer of 2016. We failed to offload a large chunk of our squad so Pep has been forced to play what he has which simply isn't good enough to compete nor play the way he likes. We have the best manager in the world, the best infrastructure of any club in the world and I have no doubt that some of the youngsters in our squad and yet to come through will be the best we have had in many years. Keep the faith. Once Pep has his team and all players fit we can judge him then. I thought we would win everything in sight this year but how naive I was. Let's hope we secure 2nd and an FA cup win, wouldn't be so bad after all would it? Next year will be totally different I am convinced.
