Galatasaray (H) | CL | Post-Match Thread

[jimharri]

Fuck me. If you win a million quid you’d moan you didn’t win 1,000,001.

The ultimate glass half empty merchant. I wonder why he bothers supporting City (if he actually does). If you can't get any joy out of it, why bother?

 

[ancoats]

Totally agree, some decent suggestions there. Players are also more susceptable to injuries and while most are maybe a little inconvenient, they could be more serious.

I get annoyed with the idiots who can't understand why we don't push on and win every match by 5 goals, or why we lose a few along the way but it's not rocket science. We simply play too many matches.

It was considered crazy if you played 7 or more matches in a month, now it's the norm and it goes on for virtually the entire season - then there are the internationals along the way. And like in any vocation it's mentally taxing too.

It's the amount of international games i dont get, The Manchester City Squad must have the most international players going to play for their country, Yes the World Cup and Euros Qualifiers, but the Uefa Nations League needs gone

Looking back on the game from the 60s/70s, players played 42 games in the league and cup matches, plus European football for the top teams. So I guess that players played about 55 to 60 games a season, plus cup replays could run and run, But International football seemed to be played without breaks, Also the home internationals was played in the summer.

But the biggest thing was the training and lifestyles, the players were not athletes and could drink and eat pretty much what they liked, So burnout was not a thing because you did not push your body to the limits.

Something needs to be looked at with footballers, maybe look at athletics athletes, thye have very big breaks between the big tournaments and don't train/play for 9 months nonstop like in football

Its the age-old question: footballers vs athletes

 

[ancoats]

That should never be allowed to happen - it would just increase the gap (and ill-feeling) between bigger and smaller teams. The latter wouldn't go for it, anyway.

OK, then, allow all clubs the same bigger squads and more transfer windows

 

[ArniArason]

I don't find us great to watch all the time but, there are things out of our control as I put in my post which dictate play most of the games both home which I can understand however, mid table teams playing at home to us follow a shit game play too.

Suppose it depends and I'm not having a pop at you, how people feel about City and the connection with us.

Fair enough. FWIW, I'm a hardened supporter of well over 40 years, I've seen it all, so I'm definitely not viewing it through the eyes of a spoilt fair-weather fan. It's just so frustrating, with the players and manager we have, we should be playing so much better football than we do. I'd even accept the odd defeat if I could see we were actually trying to play more offensive football.

 

[Axel Freed]

Fair enough. FWIW, I'm a hardened supporter of well over 40 years, I've seen it all, so I'm definitely not viewing it through the eyes of a spoilt fair-weather fan. It's just so frustrating, with the players and manager we have, we should be playing so much better football than we do. I'd even accept the odd defeat if I could see we were actually trying to play more offensive football.

How much more attacking would you like our football to be - PlayStation ? NBA ?

I don’t find it “frustrating” watching the type of football that has us as comfortably the top scorers in the league.

I’d much sooner we sacrificed our attacking principles and were a bit more pragmatic in particular games or certainly in periods of games if it led us to suffer fewer defeats

 

[Man_City_Loyal]

Everyone is in 1 group. We just didn't get to play all 48 teams in the single group. The group stage is merely a ranking tool.


Its potentially possible that everyone one team during the preliminary stages ended up qualifying... In that Scenario, there'd be very few teams they could play

Just think in the near 38 years I've been alive, I don't recall a competition like this where we could play teams so soon after Just playing them in the group stages

 

[Man_City_Loyal]

It's truly a crazy amount of games in such a small period of time, Also add on international games and traveling and you start to think, will we hold out until may

Something has to give; the Governing Bodies and Premier League need to stop counting the money and look at the schedules. Maybe allowing teams in europe to have bigger squads and more transfer windows, also a maximum of games a player can play in a year, including international games

I don't think that would be fair to teams outside of European competition, but there should be a cap on how many games someone can play in a season.

Bigger registered squads are needed to (although not to the level of our late 90s/early 00s squads haha

 

[Man_City_Loyal]

Arsenal had over 10,000 empties last night

LOL

View attachment 182045

had to google, apparently its AI made

 

[ArniArason]

How much more attacking would you like our football to be - PlayStation ? NBA ?

I don’t find it “frustrating” watching the type of football that has us as comfortably the top scorers in the league.

I’d much sooner we sacrificed our attacking principles and were a bit more pragmatic in particular games or certainly in periods of games if it led us to suffer fewer defeats

Lol. Do you seriously think we play attacking football? Do we use the pace of our wingers or Haaland? Do we look to fully utilise the best striker in the world in general? Do we have lots of shots from outside the area? Do we work on, and score lots from, set pieces? Do we look for lots of through balls? Do we generally make lots of offensive minded forward passes?

I'd say we do virtually none of the above.

If you think that is attacking football then we'll have to disagree.

I don't call having our fullbacks camped on the edge of the opposition box, making endless sideways or backwards passes before losing possession, then being caught out of position attacking football.

 

[the blue panther]

Lol. Do you seriously think we play attacking football? Do we use the pace of our wingers or Haaland? Do we look to fully utilise the best striker in the world in general? Do we have lots of shots from outside the area? Do we work on, and score lots from, set pieces? Do we look for lots of through balls? Do we generally make lots of offensive minded forward passes?

I'd say we do virtually none of the above.

If you think that is attacking football then we'll have to disagree.

I don't call having our fullbacks camped on the edge of the opposition box, making endless sideways or backwards passes before losing possession, then being caught out of position attacking football.

I guess that Pep's controlled football isn't for some. Just imagine if our football - despite a depleted squad lately - wins the league, or a cup or 2 - it'd be terrible for football, wouldn't it? We're 2nd in the league and virtually in a cup final already, with power to add. You can't go playing blitzkrieg attacking football if you have no reliable defence.

Maybe you should sign up to the Michael Carrick revolution with the odd-mob down the road. They've won 2 games on the trot you know - maybe, soon, they'll be like us and have unparalleled success over a decade.

 

[pride in battle]

Fair enough. FWIW, I'm a hardened supporter of well over 40 years, I've seen it all, so I'm definitely not viewing it through the eyes of a spoilt fair-weather fan. It's just so frustrating, with the players and manager we have, we should be playing so much better football than we do. I'd even accept the odd defeat if I could see we were actually trying to play more offensive football.

What when virtually every team puts 11 behind the ball !

 

[Scaring Europe to Death]

How much more attacking would you like our football to be - PlayStation ? NBA ?

I don’t find it “frustrating” watching the type of football that has us as comfortably the top scorers in the league.

I’d much sooner we sacrificed our attacking principles and were a bit more pragmatic in particular games or certainly in periods of games if it led us to suffer fewer defeats

Agree 100%, but there was a danger on Wednesday (and the fans were equally guilty) of City drifting and going through the motions, when 3-0 or 4-0 would have seen us leapfrog other teams, and not have to worry about Real Madrid equalising

One bloke behind me actually uttered; "If Madrid score we're fucked" and yet there was still plenty of time for the players to grasp control, which to be fair, never happened

At one point I was even envisaging an Alan Ball moment with Bernardo taking the ball to the corner flag, not realising that we needed another goal.

 

[The perfect fumble]

 

[ArniArason]

I guess that Pep's controlled football isn't for some. Just imagine if our football - despite a depleted squad lately - wins the league, or a cup or 2 - it'd be terrible for football, wouldn't it? We're 2nd in the league and virtually in a cup final already, with power to add. You can't go playing blitzkrieg attacking football if you have no reliable defence.

Maybe you should sign up to the Michael Carrick revolution with the odd-mob down the road. They've won 2 games on the trot you know - maybe, soon, they'll be like us and have unparalleled success over a decade.

Hang on a minute smart arse. What we are seeing now isn't 'Peps's Controlled Football', or at least not the brand of it we have seen previously.

I don't want out and out, no holds barred, rock and roll attacking football. I want us to use the players we have bought effectively. We have the players to both control games via possession and compliment it with the other characteristics I mentioned in my original post, at the moment we just look stagnant going forward and pressing.

Regarding your point about 'we play this way because we have a leaky defense', then how comes against both the rags and Bodo, did we end up still getting caught on the counter attack because our full backs were on the edge of their penalty area?? We regularly play a high line without playing attacking football, so we still get caught out without the benefits of scoring more goals by trying to be more attacking. In fact, I'd say that by using wingers to get forward rather than fullbacks, we'd have more protection defensively.

As I said previously, if you are happy with how we are playing at the moment, then we'll just have to disagree, but I know Pep and this set of players should be putting in far more convincing performances.

Hopefully it's being caused by a transition in the squad, but a part of me worries that Pep seems happy with this non-progressive football.

 

[ArniArason]

What when virtually every team puts 11 behind the ball !

Come on, that's an age old excuse. The way you beat parking the bus is to pass over or around the bus as quickly as possible, not by just passing to and fro in front of it before trying to pass through it.

We have the players to pull in the opposition by passing around in our own half before then getting it quickly down the wing and around the back of them, or over the top for Haaland to chase.

Seeing players of Foden, Cherki, Reijnders, Silva quality trying to pass the ball short distances time after time (with the same outcome), through a packed central defence is tedious and so wasteful.

 

[pride in battle]

Come on, that's an age old excuse. The way you beat parking the bus is to pass over or around the bus as quickly as possible, not by just passing to and fro in front of it before trying to pass through it.

We have the players to pull in the opposition by passing around in our own half before then getting it quickly down the wing and around the back of them, or over the top for Haaland to chase.

Seeing players of Foden, Cherki, Reijnders, Silva quality trying to pass the ball short distances time after time (with the same outcome), through a packed central defence is tedious and so wasteful.

How do you pass 'over' when they are camped on the edge of the penalty area ?
Maybe you should get in touch with mcfc and offer your services as you seem to know more than Pep ?

 

[Scaring Europe to Death]

Before the game I was explaining to my partner that City didn't actually need to win, but to avoid an extra two games, it would help our cause if we bettered the results of certain teams.

Everyone seemed to have winnable games, but a home fixture v Galatasaray was arguably one of the easiest

She didn't fully understand so I tried to expand with a few hypothetical examples.

If we won 2-0 then our odds of reaching the Last 16 were about 50-50 or maybe even 40-60
However, if we won 4-0 then that would put pressure on Chelsea and Sporting Lisbon etc to score more goals, and the odds would improve to around 70-30

What I didn't realise was that half the crowd probably needed the same explanation

 

[pride in battle]

Before the game I was explaining to my partner that City didn't actually need to win, but to avoid an extra two games, it would help our cause if we bettered the results of certain teams.

Everyone seemed to have winnable games, but a home fixture v Galatasaray was arguably one of the easiest

She didn't fully understand so I tried to expand with a few hypothetical examples.

If we won 2-0 then our odds of reaching the Last 16 were about 50-50 or maybe even 40-60
However, if we won 4-0 then that would put pressure on Chelsea and Sporting Lisbon etc to score more goals, and the odds would improve to around 70-30

What I didn't realise was that half the crowd probably needed the same explanation

And someone on the bench telling Pep what we needed ! I find it incredible we had no one just checking the scores to relay to Pep in case we needed to score again ?
Maybe we did ?

 

[ArniArason]

How do you pass 'over' when they are camped on the edge of the penalty area ?
Maybe you should get in touch with mcfc and offer your services as you seem to know more than Pep ?

You've obviously never played or managed football if you think a quick over the top ball to a player like Haaland is so ineffective it's not worth trying.

 

[Scaring Europe to Death]

And someone on the bench telling Pep what we needed ! I find it incredible we had no one just checking the scores to relay to Pep in case we needed to score again ?
Maybe we did ?

As it happened, the last game to finish was Benfica v Real Madrid, so for 2-3 minutes it was completely out of our hands, which was risky and unnecessary.

A 3rd goal would have seen us leapfrog Sporting, but all those panicking around me, seemed more focused on what was happening in Naples, Paris, Frankfurt and Lisbon

God knows what the players had been told, but if anything Galatasaray looked more like scoring towards the end.