Hugo Viana | Director of Football

crystal_mais said:
Viana has done ok. I'm not sure how much influence Tkixi had in January and any signings in Summer. It's a big rebuild as we had allowed the team to go stale post the treble.
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Should never have got to the stage that we needed a huge rebuild, we fell asleep at the wheel, just drifted a bit & allowed others to catch up and indeed pass us.
The powers that be are bound to have noticed
 
OL2Blue said:
Fair play to Hugo. Don't think Donna would have signed in a Txiki/Pep regime as he doesn't fit the 'Barca' style. However neither does Haaland. Donna is here for 5/6 years and Haaland 9. Pep will be long gone but whoever is in charge gets the 2 best players in the world in their positions. Superb forward planning. Can't wait for the ride and see what the future holds.
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If I ever start my snake oil company, I'll turn to you sir to be my head of sales!
 
wattle said:
How does anyone even begin to know that yet?
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By watching our game.

By watching what happened under PSG once Enrique took charge - for example.

And by exercising common sense judgement.

Something is wildly amiss at Man City currently - in terms of signings. We're bringing in top talent that doesn't fit our system and we fail to shore up obvious weaknesses.

Pep's philosophy has been high press, shadow marking, win the ball back quickly.

Now, we're (I guess) mostly trap pressing - fullbacks jumping into the press if they think it's warranted - same very high line - and now we've invested into an offside trap which sometimes works... it's a fucking mess.

What's going on is that we're not immediate enough on the press - and our fullbacks are far forward. Time and again our opposition can lob the ball over our defense on the left or right flank and we're in big trouble.
 
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At this point we have to thank Ederson, Gundo and akanji as well. They left us with better options. Some salary money are reduced. No bad feelings can be implanted in the dressing room.
Specially to Ederson. He is the best keeper in the history of Man city.
Hopefully next season we will have clear idea about nunes or lewis, Savinho and doku, One of Stones or Ake might go,
So a quality winger and a RB will be added in jan or next season.
 
those meetings with Warnock. seemed unusual how many times he turned up at CFA. he could have met Pep for dinner somewhere each time but it was at CFA before/after trainings.

I think Leijnders came it to do the dirty work for Warnock before Pep hands the job over to him.

:)
 
btw usually we have a meeting in the summer when all Soriano, Txiki, Pep went to UAE for a meeting with Mansour. maybe due to CWC this year we didnt have that this summer or because we had no trophies to take so Mansour said fuck it, dont even turn up, I certainly dont recall seeing pictures of that meeting from this summer, previously even there were big cakes and stuff...
but lets assume it was due to the strange schedule of CWC.
 
SamBlue said:
If I ever start my snake oil company, I'll turn to you sir to be my head of sales!
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Optimism is a trait many of us older blues had in spades due to the fortunes of our team through the 1970s to 2010s. Watching first Liverpool then United dominated the English game we all wished someday it would be our time. What we have then witnessed over the last 15 years has been fairy tale stuff. It's a shame some of our fans think we are entitled to sit at the top from now on, without working hard at it and taking some blows to the chin. In fact sounds like supporters of the red shirt teams...City will never be like them. Hugo has to now build on the super legacy Txiki and Pep has embedded and he will but it will take time. Our spine of Donnarumma, Rodri, Foden and Haaland will help massively to write the next chapter and our job as fans is to get behind whoever is in charge and whoever wears that blue shirt and be optimistic, just like we always have been.
 
BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
By watching our game.

By watching what happened under PSG once Enrique took charge - for example.

And by exercising common sense judgement.

Something is wildly amiss at Man City currently - in terms of signings. We're bringing in top talent that doesn't fit our system and we fail to shore up obvious weaknesses.

Pep's philosophy has been high press, shadow marking, win the ball back quickly.

Now, we're (I guess) mostly trap pressing - fullbacks jumping into the press if they think it's warranted - same very high line - and now we've invested into an offside trap which sometimes works... it's a fucking mess.

What's going on is that we're not immediate enough on the press - and our fullbacks are far forward. Time and again our opposition can lob the ball over our defense on the left or right flank and we're in big trouble.
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It's far too early to judge our signings and I think the common sense judgement having brought in new coaches this summer, is that we're not looking to play the way Pep has traditionally. Hunting in packs to go and win the ball back high up the pitch has been the hallmark but we've generally had a combination of players that are technically gifted more than particularly mobile. Aguero wasn't the best presser of the ball but managed to get to grips with what was required. Gundo, De Bruyne, Bernardo were never the fastest or most physical players but managed to do it as well.

I think it's far more likely that Pep has identified that opposition teams are much better equipped to retain possession under pressure and that playing that way is actually contributing to our downfall. So he's attempting to set up traps in other ways and get the balance right. It will take time. There's no reason why the players we've signed can't implement what he wants, but it's far too harsh to judge them when we're three games into a new season with a number of new players and have had no pre-season and limited time working with the coaching staff.

A conclusion like yours is best reserved until November time when we've spent a while playing league and CL football and are fully fit.
 
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