4 European Campaigns - Signs of improvement?

[Deleted member 58678]

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.

We try and play a possession game but we don't play enough men in midfield for it and we are around 10% worse than the proper possession teams at keeping the ball. Bayern operate at about 67% possession, we are nowhere near that. Yet we play our game like we are a 67% possession team.

We have to have some different strategies in there

 

[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.

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.

It's our difficulty playing against "2nd tier" European clubs such as Roma, Napoli, Ajax that I dont understand. We should be technically good enough against that standard of opposition.

 

[BobKowalski]

In a word. No.

4 seasons in and we have yet to have that defining moment and given the paucity of tonight's display it's going to be a long time coming. Forget tactics, formations, or the fact Yaya in a midfield 2 is only going to work when he is 100% on his game, it all boils down to self belief and our total lack of it.

We just didn't bring our A game to the party tonight and never have in the CL. Southampton or Swansea would have given Roma a better game than we did. It's all in our heads. We look beaten before we start. Even with a nice juicy pen to start us off we did jack shit for the remaining 40 minutes and this persistent lack of belief is proving troublesome.

Buying this player or that player will not fix this. Roma were not and are not some superstar team that sweep all before them. They are a good team yes but nothing in that team explained why we played so poorly. The problem is within ourselves and only we as a club, a squad, a team can fix it.

 

[Wilf Wild 1937]

No improvement whatsoever.

I agree with the sentiments expressed in previous posts.
Numerous issues: 442 doesn't work in the CL against the better teams; Yaya is a liability in this competition;
the team has zero belief with even players like Kompany failing to perform to their PL levels; the manager
is too slow to change things when plan A is clearly again not working and the build up is too slow and ponderous.

Really we look mediocre at this level.

 

[RandomJ]

We can't even use the lack of experience excuse anymore because we have been in the competition for a good few years now and really should be at least making the quarter finals. Look at PSG who have less experience than we do doing so well while we struggle every year. Yes we get tough groups and yes we have had our share of dodgy ref decision but if we are honest with ourselves we have been shocking in the CL. If the owners really want to win it we need two things. 1) sign more world class, game changing players and 2) a manager who has won it several times and knows how to set a team up for European games.

 

[Marvin]

Last time I enjoyed a European game it was something like 1977.

No wonder no one goes.

 

[LoveCity]

There was improvement last year IMO. We won every group game (4 of them against weak teams though) except Bayern's "best ever performance" (one of their players said that). But now we seem to have regressed again. Our tactics just aren't working in this competition when it matters, at all.

Nothing has been as bad as the performances against Ajax (with Christian Poulsen and Ryan Babel in their team), though. That was our low point.

 

[BigOscar]

We've always played with too many individuals who just aren't suited to european football. The CL is dominated by team performances, where everyone works together and attacks and defends as a team, whereas our teams have always been built around one or two players who might do something on their own. Players like Tevez and Yaya just don't fit with the CL anymore.

We don't work as a team at all, we don't press as a team, we don't defend as a team, we don't seem to even have a coherent plan of attack in the CL, we just look like individuals trying to do our own thing. We don't even try to play like we do in the league, so obviously we don't get anywhere near our best. I have no idea why we play 2 up top, no one ever does in the CL. We need to decide on a way to play and actually learn how to do it, untill we decide on what we are trying to do it's hard to see us achieving it/

 

[Ray78]

We've always played with too many individuals who just aren't suited to european football. The CL is dominated by team performances, where everyone works together and attacks and defends as a team, whereas our teams have always been built around one or two players who might do something on their own. Players like Tevez and Yaya just don't fit with the CL anymore.

We don't work as a team at all, we don't press as a team, we don't defend as a team, we don't seem to even have a coherent plan of attack in the CL, we just look like individuals trying to do our own thing. We don't even try to play like we do in the league, so obviously we don't get anywhere near our best. I have no idea why we play 2 up top, no one ever does in the CL. We need to decide on a way to play and actually learn how to do it, untill we decide on what we are trying to do it's hard to see us achieving it/

Atletico Madrid proves 4-4-2 can work in the Champions League providing you have the right players to press and compensate for the lack of bodies in the middle.

 

[BigOscar]

We've always played with too many individuals who just aren't suited to european football. The CL is dominated by team performances, where everyone works together and attacks and defends as a team, whereas our teams have always been built around one or two players who might do something on their own. Players like Tevez and Yaya just don't fit with the CL anymore.

We don't work as a team at all, we don't press as a team, we don't defend as a team, we don't seem to even have a coherent plan of attack in the CL, we just look like individuals trying to do our own thing. We don't even try to play like we do in the league, so obviously we don't get anywhere near our best. I have no idea why we play 2 up top, no one ever does in the CL. We need to decide on a way to play and actually learn how to do it, untill we decide on what we are trying to do it's hard to see us achieving it/

Atletico Madrid proves 4-4-2 can work in the Champions League providing you have the right players to compensate for the lack of bodies in the middle.

They don't really attack though, they defend with 10 and try and score from set pieces or maybe on the break, it's not remotely like the way we set up. Not many teams gain much success in the CL by leaving two up top to not do any defending