4 European Campaigns - Signs of improvement?

[adrianr]

Nothing will change until we get rid of Yaya. Domestic success is one thing, but European success will clearly be beyond us whilst we continue to set the entire side up to accommodate his glaring deficiencies - Or worse, set the side up ignoring them and watch everyone else exploit it.

Maybe we bought Fernando to address this and yes it's been a shame we haven't been able to field him in the CL once, but come on, it's not like he's the only player we have who can be given a job of protecting the back four.

 

[Fame Monster]

Put a scarf on Pellegrini and you will see that he is, in fact, Roberto Mancini.

Forget about the Champions League whilst he is in charge.

 

[oppa gangnam style]

You are right we dont show signs of learning from our mistakes in CL.

This squad has bigger potential in Europe but isnt coached well to get it out of the squad. Lesser squads reached further stages than us, thats the reality. Group of death or not, even from the hardest group two teams go trough. Not being ahead Real/Bayern in group stage I can accept but Roma/Napoli/Ajax/Dortmund. thats a different story.

Why were Napoli going trough not us? Why Dortmund not us, and fear same question will be asked about Roma soon if we dont learn very fast and change a lot of things around our CL games.
Do they spend more? No. Do they have so much better player? No. Do they play 3x wages than us? MAybe the other way around...
Do they play with the right mentality and great tactics? Yes...

We got our tactics spot on few times but that was the likes of Plzen with a squad that is lesser than Burnley maybe. Or against Villarreal but that was a team that actually relegated from La Liga that season to put it into perspective.
But with City's squad beating Plzen, Villarreal is seriously not a achievment.

 

[Nightmare Walking]

I blame the manager for our lack of progress over the last two seasons in Europe. He is so tactically inflexible it is unreal. He thought Roma were fodder who would roll over.
The Mancini years were different. He gets a lot of stick for failing in Europe yet I do not blame him wholly.He was far better tactically than Pelli. He just wound the players up in the wrong manner. I don't think the squad he had was as good as the one we have now in regards to options available. He got far harder groups and we were new to the champs league. Plus he had the Tevez saga. It was Mancinis personality if anything that held us back where as now it is Pelli;s tactical naivety.

There has been little progress in the champs league and I put the blame purely on the managers shoulders.

 

[@BluePhil8]

I blame the manager for our lack of progress over the last two seasons in Europe. He is so tactically inflexible it is unreal. He thought Roma were fodder who would roll over.
The Mancini years were different. He gets a lot of stick for failing in Europe yet I do not blame him wholly.He was far better tactically than Pelli. He just wound the players up in the wrong manner. I don't think the squad he had was as good as the one we have now in regards to options available. He got far harder groups and we were new to the champs league. Plus he had the Tevez saga. It was Mancinis personality if anything that held us back where as now it is Pelli;s tactical naivety.

There has been little progress in the champs league and I put the blame purely on the managers shoulders.

I agree.

I wanted Mancini gone but he had a much harder task.

He had the better strike force but we were playing Lescott and Kolo in a 3-5-2 at times with Maicon at wing back.

Pellegrini has a squad dripping in quality and all he seems able to do is put out a 442 team every week and if we can pass it in the net it's job done. If we can't pass it in then tough shit, no plan B.

Also in our first year with Mancini we got 10 or 11 points in a very hard group but still came 3rd. We've only regressed since that initial season.

 

[Deleted member 58678]

Manager and players have been just as naïve tonight as the manager and players were at home to Napoli in that very first game three years ago.

We have ZERO belief that we can win the Champions League. Absolutely NONE! I can see it in the players demeanour, I can see it in their performances. They play within themselves. Some of them look scared to express themsleves. That then is fed to the crowd who are also flat or just don't turn up. Fans too do not believe that we can win the Champions League and I think that then feeds down to the players.

Vicious circle and all that.

We have an arrogance and belief domestically. We strut out and look confident. Some of our lads look like little boys in Europe. We've not played well at home in any of our home group games against the better sides.

 

[cibaman]

I think a bit too much is made of the formation. we packed the midfield against Barca and couldn't get out of our half.

Pellegrini was right in that our passing was awful tonight and often is in CL games. We had plenty of possession tonight but were very wasteful. It does seem that when we come up against a decent CL side we look technically inferior.

I just dont get it. The vast majority of our players are internationals with extensive experience of playing in Europe. But in most of our CL games we've been a shadow of the team that plays in the PL. We dont look any more "CL savvy" now than we did against Napoli.

 

[onceabluealways]

Why do people expect us to get better in Europe when our first 11 isn't really getting any better.

The City men in charge need to realise that you need to sign players that improve the TEAM not the squad.

The starting 11 tonight was pretty much a starting 11 from last season, we haven't significantly changed our attack for 3 years. Some of the players look a bit flat.

Aguero, yaya etc. know they will get in no matter how they play.

Every team needs freshening up and not making any significant signings at some point will have an affect and i think it will be this season. We will be up there in the prem as the other teams just aren't much better except for Chavs, but in Europe it has been seen that this team especially playing 442 isn't good enough against strong opposition.

 

[bluesimon]

you're all talking shite. SKIN ON CHIPS !! Didn't have those with Thaksin - MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT…………………..

 

[Deleted member 58678]

I think a bit too much is made of the formation. we packed the midfield against Barca and couldn't get out of our half.

Pellegrini was right in that our passing was awful tonight and often is in CL games. We had plenty of possession tonight but were very wasteful. It does seem that when we come up against a decent CL side we look technically inferior.

I just dont get it. The vast majority of our players are internationals with extensive experience of playing in Europe. But in most of our CL games we've been a shadow of the team that plays in the PL. We dont look any more "CL savvy" now than we did against Napoli.

The thing is, other than Yaya who has won the competition, none of the rest of our core players have been past the Quarters. For almost all of them, with us getting out of the group stage last season, that was the furthest they'd ever been.

Silva played just 64 minutes of Spain's 2010 World Cup win (60mins in the very first game and 4mins as a sub later on), Navas was a bit part sub...although Silva did have a good run in the 2008 Euros.

Our players aren't as experienced as top level players like we think they are.