Our inability to set up properly for big games

Surely grinding out some results and genuinely challenging for the title would look better on his CV than what is happening at the moment?
You would think so but i just can't see it,if we were to get top 2/3 it'll be players returning from injury that does it and not a change in his rigid plan
 
Good points and i agree he should do it but he has set himself out to play a certain way and is now in the shop window for his next job where he will be hired for his style of play so he won't change imo

He's proved he can play bravura football but it is results that keep you in a job. Now is the time to win and style be damned, IMO.
 
I felt like on Saturday the problem was that we didn't treat it like a big game. Leicester just did the same thing they've been doing to everyone all season. It felt like we just disregarded where their strengths lie because we thought we'd beat them anyway. Maybe if we had treated them like a "big" team we'd have identified their threats and not played straight into their hands.
 
You would think so but i just can't see it,if we were to get top 2/3 it'll be players returning from injury that does it and not a change in his rigid plan
Oh don't get me wrong, I don't think for one minute that he will change at this point but I don't think it'll be about trying to get another job by showing his style, I just don't think he sees the flaws in his "system".
 
Well Dax If you are happy to see humiliation piled upon upon humiliation just go right ahead with your so called facts until he is out the gate. I for one just hope that somehow we can steady the ship and avoid a meltdown. If we continue to play the way we have since Sept we will end up with nothing and out of Europe. There's a fact for you!!!
No Father Paul, that's an opinion. And not a particularly illuminating one. If we've been poor since Sept as you've supposed. Then BTW Sept and now we've advanced in 3 competitions and regressed in 1. So no. That's not a fact.
 
No, I don't think Kolarov was fit, simple as that. He didn't look it from the warm ups I was watching and the 90 minutes he played didn't change my mind.
On fitness. I can't argue with you. He looked fine to me. Just couldn't get his offensive game going. I've seen that enough trs over the years here that I'm reluctant to put that down to fitness. And for wy its worth he got in O position often and just made a harsh of his croses or Leicester was well positioned.

Either way, fitness didn't seem the issue. But my point is this, if we are going by why folks wanted Clichy, it would be for his defensive superiority. Since defensive effort, positioning or contribution wasvnot what Kolarov sucked at. The moan seems misplaced in my opinion.
 
On fitness. I can't argue with you. He looked fine to me. Just couldn't get his offensive game going. I've seen that enough trs over the years here that I'm reluctant to put that down to fitness. And for wy its worth he got in O position often and just made a harsh of his croses or Leicester was well positioned.

Either way, fitness didn't seem the issue. But my point is this, if we are going by why folks wanted Clichy, it would be for his defensive superiority. Since defensive effort, positioning or contribution wasvnot what Kolarov sucked at. The moan seems misplaced in my opinion.
He looked sluggish from the start to me. He's hardly the quickest to start off with but when not 100% it's noticeable even more.
Clichy being a better defender would likely have seen us not concede after two minutes, a goal that sucked the life out of us. If Kolarov isn't doing his offensive work then he's not got a great deal left to offer.
 
On fitness. I can't argue with you. He looked fine to me. Just couldn't get his offensive game going. I've seen that enough trs over the years here that I'm reluctant to put that down to fitness. And for wy its worth he got in O position often and just made a harsh of his croses or Leicester was well positioned.

Either way, fitness didn't seem the issue. But my point is this, if we are going by why folks wanted Clichy, it would be for his defensive superiority. Since defensive effort, positioning or contribution wasvnot what Kolarov sucked at. The moan seems misplaced in my opinion.

I would say that Clichy recycles the ball as well as being better defensively, wheras Kolarov boots it in the direction he is facing, as hard as he can. When it works it's great. most of the time he is just depriving a better player of the ball.
 
What goal were you talking about?

You can't say Yaya and Ferny doesn't work when it in fact has? That is just arguing against facts. I'd grant you that it is suicide doing it when we have multiple games a week. But notice how Yaya has been consistently subbed early in this period. The goal is to save his aging legs.

Again, take Sunderland for example we started with what most fans here wanted. If you remember the ' 'play Kelechi' whinning from our fans. So he did. We looked shaite and he quickly pulled Kelechi at half and inserted Fernando.

Sunderland was a galant effort to win, but that was actually very poor work from Pellars. His decisions against Leicester were superior, and how we played showed that.

Very intrigued to see the facts of that two man midfield working against sides of equivalent ability, or against sides that press and counter quickly. Especially over the past year or so.
 
Yeah.

I just wonder at what point he might think that we could win the title by a margin if we just go for results rather than attempting to be Brazil in every game. After all, it can hardly be the case that his job depends on us playing a certain style of football, seing as he's gone anyway.

He could line up with 5 central defenders & Joe Hart at centre forward & nobody can do anything to him. He has complete freedom to do whatever it takes, to win the title.
TBH we're royally fucked if anyone thinks Manuel will do anything different after nearly 3 years in charge! Yes when his arse has been on the line he's shown he can be pragmatic, get the result and entertain along the way. The problem is he wants to win every game by a cricket score no matter who we play, whether home or away without taking the opposition or our current form and available playing staff into consideration, so in Manuel's mind if he's going at the end of the season, he may as well go out his way.

Bersant Celina summed this up perfectly when he said Manuel's half time talk basically consisted of 'Same as the first half lads. By the law of averages having Yaya in a midfield 2 and having our slowest available back four playing a high line against Leicester's rapier like attack is bound to work at some point'. The way forward for us right now was shown against Sevilla & Villa away. We won both matches, were solid and scored goals so what's the problem you may ask? It's not Manuel's way, but if he's going at the end of the season anyway why should he be bothered?

I honestly do think he wants to go out on a high, but he wants to prove he can do it his way even though it's been mostly failing for the last 18 months considering the talent we have available. It's the definition of madness if I've ever seen it.
 
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I don't believe we lack preparation. For me it's down to the players. They lack any responsibility and shirk their jobs.
So when we played Liverpool - a team who like to press - and started with Fernando and Toure in midfield, with fernandinho on the bench, you think we were well prepared?
 
How many games against the top 6 have we played with Aguero, Kompany and Silva starting over the last two years? I would think very few.

Along with Pep, the thing we need more than most is a full scale of the injuries we are picking up.
 
Dribble said what I was thinking.

Where did this bit come from though?
Bersant Celina summed this up perfectly when he said Manuel's half time talk basically consisted of 'Same as the first half lads. By the law of averages having Yaya in a midfield 2 and having our slowest available back four playing a high line against Leicester's rapier like attack is bound to work at some point'.
 
So when we played Liverpool - a team who like to press - and started with Fernando and Toure in midfield, with fernandinho on the bench, you think we were well prepared?

I thought that time had something to do with Fernandinho just back from international duty and the fitness level was low?
 
TBH we're royally fucked if anyone thinks Manuel will do anything different after nearly 3 years in charge! Yes when his arse has been on the line he's shown he can be pragmatic, get the result and entertain along the way. The problem is he wants to win every game by a cricket score no matter who we play, whether home or away without taking the opposition or our current form and available playing staff into consideration, so in Manuel's mind if he's going at the end of the season, he may as well go out his way.

Bersant Celina summed this up perfectly when he said Manuel's half time talk basically consisted of 'Same as the first half lads. By the law of averages having Yaya in a midfield 2 and having our slowest available back four playing a high line against Leicester's rapier like attack is bound to work at some point'. The way forward for us right now was shown against Sevilla & Villa away. We won both matches, were solid and scored goals so what's the problem you may ask? It's not Manuel's way, but if he's going at the end of the season anyway why should he be bothered?

I honestly do think he wants to go out on a high, but he wants to prove he can do it his way which has been failing for the last 18 months. It's the definition of madness if I've ever seen it.

Perhaps he's just happy with having the two bits of silverware he won in his first season-still a win win on his CV
 
its unbelieveable isnt it. pep should stay where he is obviously, having a new manager wont make a scrap of difference if you listen to some loons on here.

Having Pep will make a difference, but just because Pep is so good doesn't mean that Pellegrini is so bad.

Pep has somewhat a sizable amount of haters at Bayern too (quite an unreasonable lot in my opinion), and I hope that when Pep comes, some loons here will not turn against him in bad times like they did Pellegrini.
 

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