What has happened to our leaky defence?

[BlueMedic]

We've played 3 matches against good attacking teams in that period & conceded 7.

Willy has done well, and we have improved I like to think, but a bigger test will be the continuation of this tough run - Arsenal twice, Chelsea, United, Southampton away; if we're still doing well defensively then that'll be pretty conclusive.

To me we're still vulnerable, our fullbacks are especially weak & are still making too many errors.

 

[Mike N]

Our fullbacks are making mistake after mistake. Average players who now, because of the system, get so much of the ball. I'll never understand why Pep didn't deal with this last summer.

 

[Scaring Europe to Death]

Sunderland, Stoke and Boro all missed free headers from set pieces. Mistakes were creeping in and Monaco punished us.
That's the reality, but it also helps when Lallana steps on the ball

Mind you, whoever plays in goal (including Bravo) would look better with decent full backs in front of them

 

[cadds92]

Our possession game helped a lot against most of those sides whom are mostly if not all mid-table or lower.

As soon as we played Monaco we saw the limitations. Even Liverpool could have and probably should have had 2 or 3.

 

[fatbloke]

Not losing the ball in midfield, Toure may not be a ball winner but he also doesn't often give away possession in that pivot role, makes us harder to press..

He gave the ball away more times against Liverpool than anybody, I've been full of praise for him this season but my god he was fucking appalling when pressed this weekend.

 

[Chi-town blues]

Willy stood up

Willy grows bigger every match.

 

[Bozo]

We're Man City, we concede when we want

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

People talk about "the defence" but anyone who's studied Pep's methods to any degree knows that defence starts from the front and much of his tactical approach focuses on being organised behind the ball if you can't win it back within 5 seconds of losing it. It's that latter part we haven't been doing and have looked completely shambolic when a team like Monaco hits us at pace. Players like KDB and Yaya just don't seem to get it properly. Sterling and Silva seem to understand and Sane is getting much better but the full-backs seem to be letting us down. Hopefully he will be able to work on this over the summer and, with new full-backs who understand their role and execute it better, we'll get a it tighter.

But any team can defend if it really wants to. Chelsea play with two out-and-out defensive midfielders in Kante & Matic, in front of their back four. Neither Dinho nor Yaya can really do that role and even Gundogan isn't a pure defensive midfielder so we'll always be more open but I can't see Pep changing the way we play. The players will change but not the tactics.

 

[cleavers]

We were still getting trashed on 5live tonight, stones in particular, by Waddle and Custis. Terrible defenders etc etc.....

 

[Neville Kneville]

It will take me a while to get used to the concept of every opponent, no matter how shit, or how good, getting several free scoring chances being good defending, but if that's the new definition, we're fucking great.

I like the way we flick it on for them when they boot it upfield, just to test ourselves presumably.