Who and what’s to blame?

tolmie's hairdoo said:
£120m on Rodri and Cancelo?

I'd have rather not spent the money and gone with Fernandinho in the middle again. He has been magnificent, regardless.

There continues to be a massive blind spot on City identifying quality/need in recent years, certainly under Pep?

Outside of Laporte, Sane and Jesus, the signings have not lived up to expectation.

Mendy, Cancelo and Rodri - £170m, really?

That's another world class holding midfielder and centre-back right there?
Click to expand...
Don’t forget Bernardo
 
This game reaffirmed what weaknesses this team has. The intensity can drop after two title-winning seasons but that's not the reason for our bad performances but keeping players that are injury and error-prone.

The fall of intensity is understandable and the good players in the team can be given a leeway that they are just tired and complacent. Ex. Sterling B Silva or Ederson. Hazard had a very bad season but he still remains a world-class player.

But what about players like Stones Ota Mendy Gundo who are not that great or Mahrez/Cancelo who were bought for god knows what reasons.
Our defence recruitment and scouting, in general, should be questioned for above issues IMHO. And this has no correlation with the fact that we won the leagues last two seasons. We did, it was great but the errors are still there.
Also, I am not sure we would walk into the cup games with this team and win the cup easily. Knockout games with Chelsea/United still in the competition and Bayern/Barcelona/PSG still in CL this is gonna be a tough fight.
Imagine Mbappe running in full speed against Mendy. That would be fun!
 
domalino said:
My number 1 target would be David Alaba right now I think he solves a lot of problems at LB, CB, knows Pep's system inside out and is a proper leader for Bayern and serial winner.

The forward needs to have genuine, scary pace.

Other than that I think it's almost more about who gets taken out than brought in. No more carrying people, if they arent going to commit to football 100% then they shouldn't be here.
Click to expand...

agree

out the door:

Mendy
Otto
Gunodgan
Zincenko (feel sorry for him as he is a very good player being played way out of position)

In

A replacement or two for Vinnie
A quick wide forward - we need variation to our play.
A left back who can actually fucking defend

then we can concentrate on the biggest of them all next season- a replacement for Kun
 
tolmie's hairdoo said:
Completely agree. Mahrez, Sterling, Mendy, Walker, De Bruyne, all are coming inside with the ball.

Stands to reason, everything is slowed down because the field becomes even more congested and there is then more margin for error on the turnover of the ball.

In actual fact, only Gundo and Laporte are consistently looking for a wide out ball. That's why teams are on to our centre-backs so quickly.

We have seen it twice now against United and Chelsea, a simple ball down the sides between the centre-back and full-back, is now killing us.

There is no recovery pace in the team outside of Walker.

Aside from him and Laporte, I don't rate any of our current defensive ranks.

City probably need to make a couple of of statement-like signings just to send a fresh message through the entire dressing room.
Click to expand...

seriously though, what a re the chances of those statement signings - as you rightly point out, our recruitment has been very poor: Cancello Mendy, Angelino Mahrez all very poor in my opinion or at least not what was needed (mahrez)

Pep and Txixi's transfer record is hit and miss to say the least (esp as Txixi is supposed to be "the man" in this area)
 
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