Al Hilal (N) | CWC | Post Match Thread

Manc in London said:
I am not going to overreact because it's a friendly and if we had played most of the game with our best xi, I think we would have won comfortably. I am basing my view on the past year or so but I think it's becoming increasingly clear there are a group of players who should have a limited play time. When three or four of them play together, the chances of us winning significantly decreases.

RE Dias, has he become slower or everyone else quicker. I know he was never quick but he seems to have got a lot slower.

The only time I truly felt we looked solid against the long ball was when Khusanov played. He is one of the few defenders with pace that can match attacking players.
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Pep may think he isn’t the greatest on the ball but his recovery pace would have been our life saver last night, a bit like most of Kyle Walkers City career
 
Marvin. said:
Tactical errors or players who can't defend one on one
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It’s gone past blaming players and coaches now.

We can all see the team is good at some things but crap at others and that’s not good enough to win anything.

We have regressed unfortunately and I see nothing to suggest we will suddenly start defending properly and keep clean sheets.

The amount of wasteful chances is annoying but imo the defending now needs to be the priority.

We ain’t a bad team but we ain’t great either.
 
They had 6 shots on target and scored 4, we had 14 on target and scored only 3.
Our finishing is woeful, we make their goalie look good evert game because every shot we have is straight at him!
As for the defence, well it's hard to defend when all you defenders are in the opponents half all the time. The tactics are at fault.
 
Millo said:
They had 6 shots on target and scored 4, we had 14 on target and scored only 3.
Our finishing is woeful, we make their goalie look good evert game because every shot we have is straight at him!
As for the defence, well it's hard to defend when all you defenders are in the opponents half all the time. The tactics are at fault.
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We had 14 shots, dominated the stats. The keeper made at lest two world class saves. Personally I think the tactics are going in the right direction. Just got to take those chances is all we need. Most of what we need is there though.
 
Manc in London said:
I am not going to overreact because it's a friendly and if we had played most of the game with our best xi, I think we would have won comfortably. I am basing my view on the past year or so but I think it's becoming increasingly clear there are a group of players who should have a limited play time. When three or four of them play together, the chances of us winning significantly decreases.

RE Dias, has he become slower or everyone else quicker. I know he was never quick but he seems to have got a lot slower.

The only time I truly felt we looked solid against the long ball was when Khusanov played. He is one of the few defenders with pace that can match attacking players.
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It’s not an overreaction at all mate. The team is broken in both boxes. We keep the ball and the longer we have it the more error prone we become.

Teams will sit deep and counter all day long.

The system is fucked and we need to tweak further not just play old established players expecting something different.

The attack is useless if we can’t score and it leads to goals against.

We can all see the problem but it’s not easy apparently or pep would have done so.
 
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Gumzy97 said:
Can we stop saying it was a friendly? Us fans can think that, but those players looked gutted that we are out so did Pep,Khaldoon had a face like thunder in the stands.
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A bunch of them have been complaining about the tournament
 
Phoenix900000 said:
It's funny how football changes people's opinions.

One week we look like world beaters then next week we are crap and are no where near challenging for the title or anything

People have the right to be annoyed with the result but goodness me
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We were exposed on the counter in the other games too, the signs were there and it's been our achilles heel for a while now.

We need to have a DM and defence that is disciplined and not charging up field to be exposed when we lose the ball.
We need at least three defenders on the pitch, preferrably some with pace.

I'd get rid of Eddie, Akanji and Gundogan and bring in a top GK, a top RB and start trusting our new signings!

At least the squad can have a decent break now and come back refreshed.
 
manimanc said:
Have you not thought that Pep has to rotate the team and the players because of burn out and fatigue and the fact that we've come off a full season, players have played international games then travelled to America and then played more games.
He played gundog and Bernardo in midfield purely for rotational purposes, you can't go with the same 11 it's impossible.
Pep is just saving legs in my opinion.
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Two problems with that: (1) We have other MF he could have used in rotation; (2) We've all seen the Bernie-Gundo kiss of death MF over and over and over again. How many times this past season did you see the starting lineup, see that pairing and know how the game was going to go. Most of the times we paired the two of them, it looked a lot like last night.

Of course Pep has to rotate, but in doing that, he can't put out lineups that are so flawed that it creates an obvious, sizable weakness. And yet he does it over and over again, and with the same two culprits. At times, it seems like Pep would rather lose with his guys than chance winning with the guys that aren't his. It's maddening from a guy who is the best manager of most of our lifetimes.
 
My concern coming out of that match last night was how dependent we were on attacking from the left side. I thought Doku and Ait-Nouri played well. Savinho has a long way to go if he is going to make it here.
 
we were poor in the first game well ,we allowed lot of counter attacks in first game as well . A better team punished us today .
 
The defenders are going to get the criticism, some of it justified, but for the most worrying bit about that game for me was just how easy it looked for Neves and Milinkovic-Savic on the ball. Both good players, but at our peak we would have swamped them and exposed their lack of mobility.
 
KingGeorge said:
My concern coming out of that match last night was how dependent we were on attacking from the left side. I thought Doku and Ait-Nouri played well. Savinho has a long way to go if he is going to make it here.
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His acceleration is not great ,he is rarely useful against packed defense .His best games have been games where he had time and space like Chelsea away and Brentford away .
 
Mad_fer_it said:
His marriage collapsed too. That surely got to have had a massive effect. Behind every powerful man, is a powerful woman.
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True. My hubby says it all the time.

On a more serious note, I thought they had reconciled? The split undoubtedly had a massive affect on him. And no doubt on Christina too.

I hope they are all good again.
 
dajd1984 said:
What was the pragmatism last season that wasn’t liked?
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The pragmatism referred to I suspect was the slow tedius build up which often had little or no end product.

That was an aspect which I personally found hard to watch at times.
 
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