Are City a better all round team without Haaland?

117 M34 said:
Haaland isn't a striker who will create chances for himself like Aguero would.
He needs the others to supply him the passes that give him the opportunity to score.
The other players aren't doing that at the moment.
Haaland isn't the problem. It's the supply lines that are the problem.
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Absolutely correct. Foden, Gundogan and Bernardo have done the square root of fuckall recently, regarding the creation of chances recently. Haaland is being starved. The opposition is not nullifying him, our players are.
 
levets said:
Absolutely correct. Foden, Gundogan and Bernardo have done the square root of fuckall recently, regarding the creation of chances recently. Haaland is being starved. The opposition is not nullifying him, our players are.
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To be honest over the full season you could throw Grealish and Mahrez into the mix too. It’s only recently where those two have done a bit more.

I’d give Alvarez a go WITH Haaland. Our football is turgid at times at the moment so what have we got to lose ? Change the formation to make it work and get those fullbacks overlapping again.
 
it is clear the fault solely lies on the attacking midfielders. KDB has lost his intensity now he just waits high up for the ball to come to him someday and even when it comes he has a 50% chance of completing a pass. bernardo is not showing any intensity both defensively and offensively, he is just ready to chill with the ball near the centerbacks. gundo is old and has sadly lost the legs. also they are not willing to release the early in fear of losing the ball and then lazy to run back to get the ball by pressing so they are more than happy to just have the ball and not do anything with it in fear of having to work hard with intensity.


in addition to this we have no wide outlet to compensate for the lack of midfield intensity. our fullbacks set up camp near the midfield and we have no wingers with pace. all this is a recipe for disaster. if we want to salvage our season we need to immediately by a left back with pace who can hug the touch line and burst past the defense. winter market it is not possible to buy good midfielders or winger so buying a fast LB is the only option.
 
DenisLawBackHeel74 said:
Only city could buy a Ferrari and leave it in neutral in most games.

Hopefully we can find a way of playing to his strengths …or even just passing to him.
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This.

When Haaland joined I was excited about the amount of space our midfield would have because the opposition would have to drop deep to counter the through ball.

In reality we barely ever play a ball for Haaland to run on to. It's a massive waste and a real let-off for the other team.

We should play at least 5 through balls a game. Mainly just to keep the opposition guessing but maybe some might even lead to goals.

Pep has always been possession-mad but then he's never had Haaland before.
 
DenisLawBackHeel74 said:
Only city could buy a Ferrari and leave it in neutral in most games.

Hopefully we can find a way of playing to his strengths …or even just passing to him.
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This is precisely the point though...our system is designed to avoid risk, even though we take massive defensive risks to fundamentaly employ it in the first place, but Haaland THRIVES on being released quickly with fast through balls(see 2nd goal vs west ham). I've seen countless times now where we could EASILY have given him his bread and butter pass and he would likely have gone on to score...instead we pull back and prioritise forcing the opposition back into defensive shape, only to struggle to create chances thereafter.

I hate to say this...but so far Haaland is being utterly wasted and i don't think pep so far has a clue how to utilise him without going against his own mantra.

The worst thing that ever happened to us was being forced into a situation where we had to get used the gash false9 system, gash compared to us at our peak with sane destroying defenses with pace at least, but what we see now is the carcass of what getting used to playing that way has left behind. Robotic, slow, wasteful, and not to our strengths(see grealish/haaland etc).

I'm not liking the way we play i'm just gonna straight up say it...and we certainly SHOULD NOT be better without Haaland. That is damning to pep as its just the stinking system thats better without Haaland.
 
I'd be cashing out if I was those lucky lads with the good bets on, my nerves couldn't take it lol
 
I feel that we are in transition. I hate that word but I fear it is true. We have gone from creating 20 chances and scoring 4 to not creating chances but scoring 1. We play better when we play without him at present but we are learning to play with him. Remember, this is the first time we have played with this type of striker and it is taking some getting used to. It will come but it will take time and we will be lucky if he gets under way before the end of the season.

Having said that his return hasn’t been to bad this season so far.
 
I think we are a better team with him but the system ain’t working right now. With Haaland in your team you need to give him service and it’s unfortunately been very poor of late.
 
This is bullocks. The real thread should be Why can’t pep pick the sane defence twice . The players are not performing but this slump is all on pep abc his constant need to be thought of as a genius instead of just letting the players just go out do there thing . Also not signing a left back is fucking criminal especially considering we sold out so called best one . Erling haaland is the best player we have signed in years and he will be immense if we can hold on to him.
 
Robinho's Subbuteo said:
So, last season we desperately needed a striker many said.

So, we went out and got arguably the best striker in the world.

Now, "do we really need him?"

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Remember Chelsea at home last season?

We won 1-0 but continually through the game we played great balls into the box, got to the byline (remember when we used to do that?!) and cut balls back… and no **** was in the box!

After that game I said we’d never missed Agüero more and we were crying out for a striker.

We get one and now we rarely get decent balls into the box and we never get to the byline to cut balls back.
 
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