Thoughtful, and thought provoking article.
That said, I think the "now or never" argument is overplayed, especially when considering City have three aging stop-gap players in their CL squad, and that squad has been restricted from including 4 players who would otherwise have brought that average down considerably.
Sagna, MDM and Lampard are experienced CL players (like Scholes, Neville and Butt once were!) who are just passing through this team.
In addition, while I enjoyed his analysis of the "pairs" that can't work together, I think it ignores the most relevant issue.....strength and drive.
In the top teams, there are no players who only play in one direction. Rather, they are strong in defence AND on the attack, and what I call "DYNAMIC" players.
In Silva and Nasri, we have two players who are 9/10 going forward and about 4 or 5/10 when asked to defend. That is simply not good enough for EITHER player, but when you play them both, you are asking for trouble against the strongest teams that have strong, two way players in the wide midfield roles. In contrast, look at the work that is being done by Sanchez at Arsenal, and he is considered a far more significant offensive threat than either Silva or Nasri. Today, I'd trade Nasri for him without a second thought.
When looking at Yaya and Ferni, they are stupendous when they ANCHOR the midfield. The only problem comes when we are pressing the game with our (used to be United's) arc around the opposition 18 yard box and Yaya moves into his pivot role about 25 yards out. When that breaks down, not only are our two fullbacks usually in the opposition last third, but we simply do not have the THREE DEFENDERS FROM MIDFIELD (that teams like Chelsea have), and have to rely on Ferni (Ferna) to stop the counterattack, because after him it is only Vinny and MDM...and Joe.
As Vinny said in early season interviews, we play a risky game at times and, like Stoke at home, it can prove expensive. Given the quality in the team, we can't afford, nor should we need, to play that way. There is no reason to risk an extra player going forward given the attacking talent we have, especially when that extra defender can mean the difference between winning and drawing, drawing and losing.
To be honest, I'd be interested in what City would look like in a 3-5-1/5-3-1 set-up. I know Pelle seems married to the 4-4-2(ish) set-up, but with Zaba and Kola as the FBs, I think we could make this work for us. Regardless of what we do going forward, we need to be harder to attack and more solid in defence.
..................................... Hart
......................Kompany.............MDM/EM
...........Zaba...........Yaya.............Ferni.........Kolarov
..................Navas...........Milner..........Silva
..................................Aguero
And, one more thing....sooner or later, a team is going shred the "we defend the 18 yd line" offside trap that has worked so well SO FAR. Bayern sprang it in the first minute, and Chelsea score a lot of goals by midfielders making that deep run through the defence. If we had tracking midfielders, we would be fine, but we don't!!!
Fingers and toes crossed for a brilliant win this Sunday. Wish I could be there, but I will be up at 1am in my Tokyo hotel room wearing my City shirt and cheering them on!!
COME ON CITY!!!
