It's Quiet thread 14 - 'do one' edition

[mancity1]

I've dedicated countless hours on podcasts to this very principle. City are at their most vulnerable when they have anaemic possession without threatening the opposition, because inevitably when their chance comes, they bury it either because one of our defenders makes a glaring error, or because collectively the backline shits itself. Either way, that lack of confidence starts with the attackers not taking chances as crazy as that sounds.

Also the oppositions confidence in counter attacks comes from us not threatening them when we attack. If you're Leicester, after the goal you watch us keep the ball with no real purpose for fifteen minutes and you realise "okay we're still in this game, they're just playing keep ball without laying a glove on us".

if that is the case then that goes back to the players we have in those positions and the way they are managed.

The good keeper for example especially in a side with 79 per cent possession and a fair chunk of that in the opposition half is usually called on a a couple of times to earn his corn and the same applies to the how you defend.

The fact that most of our numbers are forward means that defenders don't have as much time in games doing what they would have to do more often if possession was reversed but it doesn't excuse glaring mistakes and poor coverage and organisation when we don't have the ball.

if we cannot keep leads be they 1-0 or better then we have no hope of winning the title because opposition teams and more of them than in the past 10 years are more comfortable at getting men behind the ball.

Its pretty easy to defend when our build up play is slow and lacking passes that open up space and movement.

 

[City_Sean]

I'm actually starting to get really excited about the Dias transfer. He sounds like exactly what we need. I think having a solid CB pairing will fix a massive amount of our issues.

I doubt we'll bring in a LB as it seems time is simply running out, but I'd hope that Laporte and Dias start together this weekend. Bounce back and things suddenly will be looking up ahead of the international break.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

It was his job 12 months ago and we still have the same issue, the team has to defend from front to back, you can't blame the back 4 individually.

Our back 4 are hung out to dry by our hung go attacking, it has to stop.

we used to have 3 walls to block a counter, the front line with the initial press, then Fern sweeping in on the first ball out to either foul or win it back, and then the back 4 if it got that far, but there was often enough disruption in the first 2 phases that it was rare we got badly exploited.

Now we have 1, the back 4, we have no midfield in the defensive transition so in effect we have 30/40 yards of blank space for the opposition to create a counter in and therefore they get much clearer opportunities and the defence now gets caught between ideas of how to stop it hence we get a plethora of individual errors as they aren't singing from the same sheet and are put under too much critical pressure, instead of being there (like say at Liverpool) to just clean up and been the final wall to an already disrupted counter.

That's why Liverpool have crushed the league and done us over, because the midfield is just there to crush any counter and win the ball back, so the backline rarely comes under critical pressure. What Pep has failed to acknowledge in purchasing Rodri was the unique factor that allowed his style to work in 17/18 and 18/19 was the energy of Fern allied with his technical skill, to allow us to play Pep's way in attack but have the legs to have a 2nd wall to counter attacks. Gundogan was a drop-off but given the sweeper role with a really intense, Bernardo inspired first press, his job was more to pick up the loose counter and recycle than break it up. Last season both he and Rodri were tasked with breaking it up a lot more and it failed miserably.

It's why Gundogan, Rodri and the likes of Mahrez might be good players but they don't suit what Pep needs in England. The unfortunate thing is it's been completely missed and we've unravelled what works and created something that is deeply problematic for a Pep style of play.

Equally, we had a plethora of simple chances in tight games last season that we squandered, largely Jesus and Sterling, that puts us on the back foot. The low block isn't the killer because we still get really good chances in pretty much every game, it's not taking them when they arise and instead having to wait for 6/8 attempts before our front men score. Liverpool tend to take their early chances, as we did in 17/18 and 18/19 and it sets the tone for entire games.

We can't do a 3 phase press with this current squad so Pep has to either philosophy or make a couple of signings to address it in the next few days.

 

[Centurions]

Don’t know how reliable he is, but a couple ITKs + Sam Lee is hinting at a LB

He styles himself as a 'freelance sports writer', this is because he's not actually old enough to be employed by anyone yet. So no, he probably got his 'info' from on here.

 

[cjn]

We reinvented the team when we didn't have to. Sane and Raz on the wings were unstoppable. We decided to buy Mendy and Mahrez and went away from something that was working brilliantly to something that has become a big issue. The only reinventing we need to do is backwards but good luck finding someone to replace Sane.

You missed a huge one: replacing Fernandinho with Rodri. I think Rodri is an excellent player, but in retrospect I'm not sure how we looked at the season Ferna had in 2017-2018 and decided to go for someone of a different profile.

 

[Neville Kneville]

Agreed, but the first Leicester goal came because we lost the ball in the near the opponents box , and two pases later Vardy is in on goal, the midfield was wide open. One past it 34yr old and a young immobile player , simply unacceptable with the way Pep sets the team up.

But two seasons ago, Vincent Kompany would have been kicking the shit out of Tielemans as soon as he turned & the fullback & def mid would have been on it too. Rodri was running forward as Leicester won the ball & the defence was 20 yards back because one of them is a shit, slow kid who only defends by appealing for offside.

We need to get back to being able to squeeze play & react if it goes wrong.

Hopefully Dias will help us get that going again.

And Pep will stop taking the piss with his team selections, once players are fit.

 

[Neville Kneville]

I'm not even sure its teams countering us, its mainly our utter inability to defend that is costing us so many goals. Last season i can think of Chelsea, Southampton, Norwich, United, Wolves away, Lyon where we literally just gifted the opposition goals. Then two games into this season and we are at it again but even worse. Teams know now, keep it tight and stop us scoring and they have a great chance as they just wait for us to fuck it up.

In a nutshell.

 

[simon23]

Teams are defending better against us than anyone & we are defending worse agsinst them than anyone.

The goals we let in, are often amongst the worst conceded by anyone, each matchday.

It has wrecked the confidence of the team.

One decent opposition attack & our standard drops immediately, because we are expecting disaster. It was clear v Wolves.

You can't keep swaggering around backheeling the ball to each other & flicking it over the keeper, if you think one wrong move means a shot on goal at the other end.

The defence is destroying the attack.

Agreed

a very simple premise is that if someone dosnt score against us e cant lose - now thre are a number of approaches to that - the Jose way - mind numbinlgy boring defensive football that is often shit to watch btu can be effective.

Then there is the pep way and he defends by keeping possession (ie if you dont have the ball you cant score) - however we arent looking after the ball well enough and when we lose it we are too stretched defensively and our players are neither good enough one on one nor quick enough to recover with the excpetion of walker as was demonstrated very clearly vs Leicester when Rodri (i think tried a terrible cross field ball that was cut out and suddenly a Leicester attacker was one on one with Garcia and had left him for dead....it was only cause Walker has a sprint that some olympians would be proud of which meant that he was able to get back and recover the ball

If it had been on the oter side of the pitch and mndy chasing back it would have resulted in a chance on goal

Our defenders need to be pacey (Walker, Ake Laporte all decent at this...zin, Mendy garcia arent). Our midfield cant recover at all (Gundo, Rodri all slow and KDB can often be too far forward to recover though Ive seen him bust his gut getting back as does foden

then there are the wide players....Sterling does a decent job of recovering - Mahrez is terribe (it was his pathetic attempt of a tackle that helped lead to the first penalty conceeded by equally poor defending by walker)
Not seen enough of Torres to decide either way

On another note our pressing has even been abandoned or we have become terribly poor at it. People use to go on about Silva not being able to defend but he was quite adept at knicking the ball

 

[Craig]

We had inverted wingers in the 18/19 season too, I think we need to wait until we have all our players to see just what formation is and how we play this season when we hve Jesus back and a first choice back 4.against Wolves it looked a much more energetic press. Too early to jump to conclusions based on the team out against Leicester.

Yeah and Bernado had a great season (one in three) but we closed out that season by being much more solid rather than with the flair of the previous season. Fair enough though it worked excellently. Couple of big differences is now though in that during that few months Sterling played very well on the left and that’s the only time he’s been consistent there in about 4 years on the left In total and we’re a creative midfielder down. Scoring plenty of goals doesn’t meaning he’s been playing well there or committing fullbacks because for over 12 months now he hasn’t. The signs were there against Wolves as despite us playing very well first half we still didn’t create much and if it wasn’t for some very poor finishing we could easily have lost thatin the 2nd half. When Wolves came at us they were going through us pretty easily.

 

[Thaksinssoldier]

I disagree because fundamentally we need to be able to score goals and create chances more importantly than we need to be able to defend counter attacks. Too much emphasis is being placed on a defence which hasn't had a stable partner for Laporte almost since he joined.

Our attacking play has been too patchy for too long and we are too quickly frustrated by a low block. One of the big reasons that we are suddenly so susecptible to goals on the counter is that we can't fucking score or create at the other end. City are at their worst, their most weak, when they aren't threatening the opposition goal.

14 on the bounce at the end of 18/19 season suggests that we could attack just fine without Leroy when we wanted to. Our general approach play has been disintegrating since then.

That's not a defence of Mahrez either, because I think he was a very bad buy. One driven by Pep. Also Sane was basically driven out the door by Pep. So on both counts it's a difficult one to know what to do with because I'd have Pep as a coach over any individual player.

I can see the logic on Sane, but that 14 on the bounce was Bernardo and not Mahrez. Since then he’s moved yet another potential ballon d’or winner in Bernardo out of position to accommodate Mahrez and it simply isn’t working.
Ironically we also had Sterling who could play right, meaning we’ve kind of created a problem we never had to begin with.