Long goal kick why? We’ve played out from the back against much better sides and retained the ball. We lose the header, we lose the 50/50, Stones then let’s Zaha run instead of taking him out and accepting the yellow card. Frustrating.
Yes think he wanted to show he could waste time just as the Palace keeper hadVanity from Ederson. Playing to the crowd, time wasting and then showing everyone how far he could kick it. Having said that it should have been in his net within 10 seconds.
Bernardo who'd been out of form, played a blinder against United, in a free role.Pep does love to fuck about with the team too much.
If things have gone stale. The evidence suggests that we have not gone stale but that we can not handle injury to Laporte.
Anyone can argue that if x happens we should do y. You need to say whether you think x has happened i.e. Pep has lost the players. We can all agree with a generality that once a coach loses the dressing room he is done. If you claim that Pep has indeed lost the players, and should be doing a better job at defensively drilling the team, then I think this argument will indeed get criticism. There's no justification for it. We know the side's struggling but there are more obvious explanations than putting it down to the coaching
Spot on.. I bet Pep was going mental with the team afterwards for the whole sequence which led up to Palace's equaliser. We were saying in our seats in the Family Stand that the team needed to calm down and gather itself when all that 'goalkick/timewasting' stuff was going on and a few of us were saying words to the effect of 'don't go long.. manage the game.. why risk losing possession?' as Ederson shaped to take the kick. Had Eddy waited until we could play the ball out in our usual fashion, I'm sure we'd have seen two things happen.. (a) we wouldn't have given Palace the chance to gain possession, which led in succession to Aguero's minimal aerial challenge, De Bruyne's weak challenge, Cancelo's rush of blood and Stones's lack of bite with Zaha and (b) that f**kwit of a referee yesterday would've immediately booked Eddy for timewasting, confirming his complete f**kwittery given the way he'd spent all afternoon doing nothing about Palace's timewasting, apart from his 'attempts' to speed up the Palace goalkeeper with those 'Paddington hard stares' of his.. Hey ho, on to the next game, lads, 3 points on Tuesday please!Long goal kick why? We’ve played out from the back against much better sides and retained the ball. We lose the header, we lose the 50/50, Stones then let’s Zaha run instead of taking him out and accepting the yellow card. Frustrating.
We can’t win the league anyway so not that arsed
I think we just need to go big in cups and the league will just tick over
People slagging of stones etc
He along with others like mendy and Laporte need games before big cup games
You moan about pep but when he’s gone we’ll miss him big time
He does change his system - see games at Man Utd and Liverpool
Defensively his philosophy of dominating possession high up the pitch leaves us exposed on numerous occasions. Teams score against regularly from limited attempts on goal. Why because they get gilt edged chances.
Pep's philosophy is all risk and reward. However, when up against Barca a few years ago, he modified things and it didn't come off. As for the Liverpool front three - Salah's coming up to 28 but has only been scoring a significant number of goals since 2017. Sergio is a better striker than the Liverpool front three, Kane the lot. You judge a striker by the number of goals they score in a top team - it's a level playing field. Jesus near enough scores one in two.
At this rate the dippers will win the league in March and will be able to concentrate on the FA and CL cups, meanwhile we'll be struggling to get 2nd and thereby qualify for automatic CL group stage qualification having to play full strength in every competition, meanwhile the dippers rest players for their league gamesWe can’t win the league anyway so not that arsed
I think we just need to go big in cups and the league will just tick over
People slagging of stones etc
He along with others like mendy and Laporte need games before big cup games
You moan about pep but when he’s gone we’ll miss him big time
There's no inconsistency between those two statements. If there's a fundamental issue leading to underachievement or underperformance and any organisation, not just a football club, feels that the manager is the problem, the best course of action is to sever the relationship and get someone new in, in order to freshen things up. Pep's earned time because of his achievements for us and for his previous clubs. I'm sure he'll see the next season out, then we'll see. If we struggle for top 4 next season then I think most would agree it will be time to look elsewhere. On the other hand, we may win the quadruple.In one post you state Pep has "credit in the bank for what he's done the last 3 seasons" but then go onto to say "Loyalty doesn't come into it I'm afraid". I completely disagree, he's earned that loyalty based on the 3 season, maybe 4 as we don't know how this season will play out.
I repeat what I said earlier, where were all the doubters when we hammered the Rags and Villa? Probably blowing smoke up Pep's arse...
Agreed, believing all our problems stems from Laporte being out is something I want to believe, but in my opinion it's way too simplistic. We have been way to easy to defend against way too often this season, Eric will help with passing through the lines but with Ferna there that has hardly been the problem. He will help us tremendously with his presence in the box and making decisions that a actual defender would make, on top of being a genuine world-class defender one-on-one, but he won't be able to suss everything out, and I might even fear for his confidence coming back and having to play himself back in form from a serious injury in the shambles our defence has been this season. Our primary system has been found out, and even if Eric's brilliance would fix it somewhat that still means the system is fundamentally flawed considering guys like Stones, Otamendi and Fernandinho(a lot of people are happy with him and he hasn't been terrible but not good enough imo) can't step in without making us a team that concede every time someone runs at us.I think your long held opinion that Laporte will sort out most of our defensive problems isn’t realistic but we will find out soon enough.
Bernardo who'd been out of form, played a blinder against United, in a free role.
Drops him against Villa then brings him back on the wing in place of Mahrez who had a blinder against Villa.
It confuses us. I imagine it affects the players too.
I think your long held opinion that Laporte will sort out most of our defensive problems isn’t realistic but we will find out soon enough.