His punching is very hit and miss, rarely getting clean contact. I assume he doesn’t try catching because he’s not very good at it.For me it comes down to the passion to defend by closing down opportunities. To be fair some of the goals from Fulham and City were worldies
From a defensive perceptive the first 2 goals were half chances that required excellent finishes from Fulham
If you look at Arsenal their players throw their bodies to block shots, ours first reaction is arms behind their backs to avoid giving away a penalty.
Donnaruma needs to be more aggressive in dealing with corners as well
I agree. Gonzales is being played to death. He was exhausted last night. We have been unlucky with Kovacic being injured while Rodri is still unavailable. We have no one to bring in there. ORiely is not the answer in there. If a deal can be done in January for a DM we should do it.We need two holding midfielders. We are far to open in midfield
Why was that a booking? With all the balls around the pitch it didn't delay the restart. (But the Leeds goalie didn't get a card for receiving the ball for a goal kick and running away from the goal area.)The way he booted it out of the stadium to get booked was glorious.
Unnecessary, but glorious.
think if goals shared more evenly through game it would be taken differently but 5-1 upNot comparable in terms of any winning run but I think I remember during the treble season it took a last minute Haaland penalty to beat Fulham was it at home?
Plenty on here were moaning and criticising Pep and the team afterwards.
No team is perfect. Certainly not this season.
But we are currently 2nd, the highest scorers, winning when playing not at our best and Haaland broke the fastest to 100.
Cheer up!
As good as Foden is it might help if occasionally he put a tackle inPositives foden looks almost back to his best
Erling getting more involved and pressing a bit more,
Doku before he was subbed scared em to death despite his end product which was ok
And a fairly decent first half.
Finally Nico orielly another decent game although tired second half.
Negatives and there are many
Reinders although only his first season just not good enough, nowhere near involved as much as he should be.
We have a midfield that cannot win 50/50s
They are so weak in the tackle and at one point a Fulham player managed to win the ball 3 times from 3 different city players
The defence is the biggest problem here
With Dias the main culprit.
I firmly believe that most teams no longer fear us like our title winning years
in those years our defence had little to do as we had mostly 60% or more possession
That fear has gone.
Watching Dias come charging out of defence failing to win a single header all game then turn his back and open his legs to every shot at goal was alarming.
I honestly think pep is gone end of this season and only stayed on due to his promise
Of sticking with it till the 115 is sorted.
There’s just no explanation from a manager as good as pep that he would constantly bring on savihno who he must know is bang average at best, it’s almost as if he’s just giving people games for the sake of it to keep em happy.
Fulham concentrated on the left hand side when attacking and I think most if not all their goals started from that side yet pep didn’t react so nunes had a torrid time
The drop of in quality from the treble winning side is unreal.
O'Reilly does not make many mistakes, and Nunes is super quick.
Isn't the more obvious explanation that we are missing Rodri and that last night the goals started to go into our net after we took off our defensive midfielder?
Hitherto, our defensive record was decent, but we rarely have control of games for 90 minutes. We have a tendency to play for 45 minutes. I can't really explain why that is.
Just watched the highlights again and it looks like that late chance was going wide. So never in any danger!!!
Thanks. What kind of injury?Injured #Surgery
Nunes is a problem. He makes horrible decisions in proper head scratching moments. We'd just gone 3-0 up and 2 minutes to half time. Rather than clear the ball up the pitch and give us a moment to get our shape he tries to control it out of the air and beat 2 players. Loses it and they score. He has the potential to be a really good player and just when you think he's proving he can be one he drops a bollock that usually costs us a goal.
I said that in all seriousness to hubby. I thinkwe do. He's solid. Get him back.We definitely missed Jack Grealish last night.
Nico was subbed in the 64th minute it was 2-5 at that point & we were well under the cosh. I assume he was taken off because of injury, he had taken one in bollocks though that bought tears to my eyes.Ait-Nouri is unlikely to improve us defensively unless it's part of a plan to move O'Reilly into midfield. I am not too worried as we took off Gonzalez at 5-1 and we have Rodri coming back soon (fingers crossed).
We basically collapsed after taking Nico G off. Pep knows that and has mentioned maybe moving NOR into midfield. We were so slow getting blocks in and that can only happen when players are knackered. City ran about 7km more than Fulham according to BBC stats, maybe we have to focus our energies better. Anyway thank fuck we won. Last night we beat a good Fulham team away and scored some great goals that we can now enjoy.