Al Hilal (N) | CWC | Post Match Thread

Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
Absolutely. Much needed and will pay off next season.
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No, surely we need to keep going, play 2 games a week for 52 weeks a year and hone their tactics and understanding of each other completely before the season starts and therefore become impossible to beat ever again?
 
Got to be honest. When we signed new CB's in Jan and seeing the pace and aggression of Khusanov i thought at last we'd seen the last of Akanji. Unfortunately not. And as much as Nunes has improved he just isn't up to it defensively.

The midfield raises lots of questions. I think the Bernardo captaincy position means Pep sees him as a regular starter and even Gundogan getting picked. Until Pep can step away from him temptation to always pick his old favourites we will get these types of performances.

And finally Doku has had a decent tournament to be fair, but him and Savinho should be miles away from being regular starters for any team that wants to win big trophies.
 
chaddblue said:
Now that we’re gonna have some semblance of a pre season the club will probably be hastily arranging some pre season games
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Yes, let's run them into the ground again in readiness for another 60+ match season. Sounds like a great plan.

Don't forget we have more matches in the new CL format now too.
 
We have always been suspect to a counter, it's why Liverpool were the ultimate foil for us. But if you look at that teamsheet, profile-wise it looked a lot like a klopp team. 3 in the middle were basically Henderson, fabinho and wijnaldum (Reijnders, Bernie, Gundo). Upfront Salah, mane are basically same kind of profile as doku and savinho without the goals(!). The way we have been playing is a bit more hectic like a klopp team. Clearly we were trying things in this competition which is fine, as the season goes on we will need to find a happy middle ground in between those tactics.
 
Newman Noggs said:
Although that's a little extreme, their lack of chemistry with Haaland is worrying. If Doku beats his man and puts it near-post, Haaland is lurking at the far-post, if Doku dinks it far-post, Haaland has gone near'-post. In the unlikely event that Savinho beats his man and manages to clear the first defender, Haaland falls over in shock like the rest of us.
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You’re probably right. Like I said just watched it and frustrated with the same issues as last season.

Doku is a great runner but he doesn’t seem to have the final product on enough occasions.
I find him a really frustrating player.

I really don’t think we can go another season with Savinho on the right though, he’s a passenger.

Compared to Sterling and Mahrez I just don’t think these 2 are good enough.
 
coolcity said:
Why is it fair to say we won't be challenging for the title? Because we narrowly lost one match against a side who are used to playing in conditions like that every week? You're basing our title challenge on that? Perhaps we'd better have a total clearout then and start again.

Can we all stop being so narrow minded just for once? If the players' mentality was half as bad as some of you in here we'd have been relegated by now.
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We have just lost to Al Hilal in a tournament we were taking very seriously or so we were told. There is no excuse for that at all.
 
youngbob said:
I've said since the start that I wanted us to treat this tournament like a friendly series and that's exactly what we've done. Glad the lads are coming home early and can get six weeks off.

Pep didn't really want to be there, Akanji and some of the other lads definitely didn't fancy it either, and that's because it's a stupid circus of a tournament that should never have been expanded.

All the new signings are looking promising, all the old lads are looking like old lads, the new system will take time to get used to but we knew that anyway. I think another defensive signing and we'll be good to go.

It's been nice to see Haaland, Foden, and Doku all get their scoring touch back during these games. Foden notched his 100th City goal last night, which is an incredible milestone for an academy player.

Hopefully this means there's space in the calendar for a friendly game at the Etihad in a few weeks, or a Manchester City XI friendly against Altrincham or Macclesfield or Stockport. I miss those local friendly games.
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Prefer the friendlies to be away.
 
coolcity said:
Yes, why not run them into the ground completely and collapse a quarter of the way into the season again because they haven't had a break? Sounds like a great plan, worked well last season.
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STFU and read what I wrote. Who mentioned running them into the ground?
 
coolcity said:
As far as I'm concerned it was the financial aspect that was the most important . This tournament paid us nearly as much as Liverpool got for winning the title, and in a season where we didn't win any silverware we have again banked far much more money than any other PL club so that's a result as far as I'm concerned
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... and they say romance is dead :-)
 
Micky Blue said:
You’re probably right. Like I said just watched it and frustrated with the same issues as last season.

Doku is a great runner but he doesn’t seem to have the final product on enough occasions.
I find him a really frustrating player.

I really don’t think we can go another season with Savinho on the right though, he’s a passenger.

Compared to Sterling and Mahrez I just don’t think these 2 are good enough.
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Dunno, most of us were wrong with FFS, Gundogshit and Plodri. Just need time to gel and find balance between attack/defend IMO. Trust Pep.
 
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