All these creative players, so little creativity?

ayrshire_blue

Well-Known Member
Joined
1 May 2008
Messages
5,784
Our defensive frailties are such a blatantly obvious problem which is only serving to overshadow how little we're creating going forward.

Before anyone starts, I'm not posting to bash individual players here but point out that the team has a problem. We went out in the summer and spent 104 million on Sterling and De Bruyne. We already have arguably the most creatively gifted player in the league in David Silva, mixed with Toure who plays because of what he supposedly offers going forward compared to defensively. We've got the 'different option' in Navas and again the different styles in play between Bony and Aguero up top.

So the question is...why are we creating so few genuinely good goalscoring chances? We had one tonight through KDB, zero against Swansea from open play, one at Stoke through KDB, one aguero created for himzelf at home to Liverpool, zero at United, 2 or 3 at Villa being the exception and offered very little at home to Norwich.

With the abundance of creative players in our side why are we struggling to make chances of any note?

It's one thing saying we played decent tonight - for half an hour at least. Yep, I was watching the same game and we kept the ball well and arsenal done very little until the first goal. But for all the possession we were enjoying Arsenal weren't threatened. KDB's chance aside we never really looked like scoring.

Where's it going wrong in that respect?

When we start creating enough chances and putting teams under the correct sort of pressure we'll start winning games. How do we get there again?
 
The players play too far away from each other so the passing is slow and becomes predictable and easy to defend against. We are incredibly borin to watch. Even with Silva and Kun out too if imagine a side consisting of Yaya Fernandinho Sterling Navas deBruyne and Bony would play some gteat football but we didn't and we haven't particularly with Silva and Kun on a regular basis for the last two seasons. Sometimes we turn it on, often we don't and cruise through some games with little excitement.
 
No triangles, no patterns, nothing elaborate. We are very predictable and overly reliant on defenders falling for the same tricks we use over and over, and the individual brilliance of some of our players. Pellegrini is an attacking manager but doesn't seem to be a deep thinking tactician, unlike Guardiola and others. We've been very sussed out lately except against open or naive teams.

 
KDB one on one , Navas one on one , Aguero header from free kick , Bony header from corner , Bony chance deflected past the post , Toure through twice on goal but scuffed shots , a couple of reasonable penalty claims , thats just what i can remember , without seeing a replay , we made enough chances ,we didnt take them. Arsenal had 2 shots in the 1st half and scored both , zees is futball , it happens.
 
Was plenty of criticism of Navas on the commentary tonight and it was pretty justified tbh
 
No triangles, no patterns, nothing elaborate. We are very predictable and overly reliant on defenders falling for the same tricks we use over and over, and the individual brilliance of some of our players. Pellegrini is an attacking manager but doesn't seem to be a deep thinking tactician, unlike Guardiola and others. We've been very sussed out lately except against open or naive teams.


It's depressing. Sideways, sideways, sideways, then out to the advanced full back, then no cross because Aguero won't win a header, so pass back to the centre backs or holding midfielders and pass sideways across to the opposite full back, who then passes backwards. Until the point where some tool decides to play a long ball to Aguero. Rinse and repeat.
 
We play with width generally but we are poor when we eventually get to the box.

We are very easy to play against. Teams are making themselves compact and are quite happy to let us have the ball.

Barcelona is the blueprint and they are also about possession but they have technically much better players. We are not as good as we think we are and are in fact very predictable.

The answer. We need to work harder as a group to retrieve the ball, and move it much quicker and more directly than we do when we have it. We need better shape in possession, but more than anything we simply need better players. Your Fernandos' etc are never going to be good enough and him, along with a few others, need to be moved on in the summer to develop a new squad that will play how Pep wants.
 

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