Burnley (h) pre-match thread

[St.Pauli support]

want to see this line-up against Burnley:

Bravo
Stones - Otemendi - Kolarov

Sterling - Garcia - KdB - Dinho - Silva

Nacho - Aguero

With Pep:s last word before the game "Impress me with your skills, show me your potential, and fight for being a part of this team !!! "

I just want 2 strikers and SPEED, but I´ll trust Pep to do an even smarter selection

You've summed it up very well mate.
We need attitude, pace and confidence. And the Blue boys simply should have some fun again playing football!!
First match this year, so make a statement ffs.
Ahh, the chanting crowd as well...

We need more variation in pace, more surprise, more movement up front.
Silva, KDB and Yaya are able to play the perfect pass, we just need to run into those channels. Drop back before, Sergio!

We also need more speed variation in the build-up. Slow passes followed by sharp passes can quickly open up one side.
We have the footballing ability and thus we need to use that advantage.

A New Year should also make a cut to improve the defense. We need to be more compact and we really should have the target for January not to concede 1 single goal. We have to start at some point and it should be now.

As @Lancet Fluke said: it's mainly about attitude. I do share his view. I don't know about City's pre-match mental preparation, but this topic definitely has to be rearranged asap.

 

[jimharri]

Yeah, quite agree Jim - it just seems that virtually every referee name fills you with apprehension knowing they'll take every opportunity to stitch us up one way or another - be it pens, bad line calls or simply bookings. The standard of officiating in the PL, supposedly the richest league in the world, is abysmal compared to what we see in Europe.

Anyways - 3-1 City. ( even allowing for Bob Lord's return!)

Wasn't having a go at you. Agree with you about the standard of refereeing in the PL. We've seen some shockers in our games. And in other games as well. I was just suggesting that if we bring our 'A' game to the table today, the referee should be insignificant in the wider picture. Bloody hope so, anyway?

 

[TFC]

Let's see what the line up is first,and secondly we usually know within the first ten minutes how things will go if it's high tempo or slow methodical build up..

Spoiler alert - it will be slow methodical build up.

;)

 

[jimharri]

Maybe if we tried a few shots from outside the box, it couldn't hurt, after all I'd sooner we had a go than kept up the walking it into the goal strategy! I can forgive a lot if I see that they've tried for it. :-) JMHO

Had to google that JMHO bit!

 

[domalino]

Is Sane available today?

If he really was too injured for the bench vs. Liverpool I can't imagine he's fit enough to play much of a part 48h later.

 

[daztrueblue91]

I've never understood why we shifted away from this just to accommodate Gundogan, who, to be fair to him, is a good player, but hasn't shone in the league. That formation solved the Silva-KDB problem by having them both in the middle, protected by Dinho, and able to thread passes to Aguero or a true winger on either side. And this formation actually worked even better with Sterling on the left and Navas on the right.

Silva is terrible on either wing, and putting KDB there takes him out of the game. I'm hoping Pep realizes this again.

I don't think adding Gundogan to the side is the reason our form dropped. The exact same thing happened when we added KDB to the side last season as well. It's no coincidence that it started when we got deep into our CL campaign.

It's more likely that teams found a different way to play against us and playing 2 games a week meant it was hard to keep up the level of pressing we was using.

 

[Pleatfooted]

These two statements are just about correct. I prefer to say that Spurs thoroughly outplayed us. Let's have it right: no-one else has. That's no consolation, of course. My feeling for the season is that we've been throwing away points in all sorts of games. Whether it's down to a new system that players are not comfortable with (or are simply not capable of implementing) remains to be seen. The record of conceding more goals in the first fifteen minutes of matches - more than Hull, ffs! - is simply mind-boggling, in a team of this quality. But is probably related to the learning curve, and the fact that Pep has made far more changes to his team than any of the other top five. Back to Burnley, since that's what this thread's supposed to be about. Let's hope they're angry about Anfield. If they are, I can see four-nil. If well, basically, they think it was ok, this could be another home draw and two more points chucked away à la Southampton, Everton, Middlebrough.

The record of conceding more in first 15 mins doest surprise me at all, that's the period we seem to kack about the most needlessly passing the ball back and forth across the defensive line and back to bravo instead of getting into the faces of teams more like for some reason were able to do post 45 mins

 

[Pleatfooted]

Spoiler alert - it will be slow methodical build up.

;)

Hahaha

 

[deano ou812]

Spoiler alert - it will be slow methodical build up.

;)

Hahaha,thought methodical seemed better suited than half arsed ;-)

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

It comes to something when we seem to be sh*tt*ng ourselves about playing Burnley at home.....

Football is a massive confidence game. We have the players to beat anyone; yes even Zab, Ota, Kolarov, and Clichy. Chelski are supremely confident at the moment, as were Liecester for the whole of last season. We have very little confidence at the moment. We just need to get a couple of decent performances under our belt, and avoid silly mistakes; the confidence will build from there.