City 3 - 1 Barcelona - Post match thread :-)

What a performance.

To come back from a goal down, is the most impressive thing imo. Against Barca, with our history of inferiority complex v them, which even the kids suffered from yesterday.

Bizarre that we played part of the game with basically Pellegrini's system, with DeBruyne as a 2nd striker, yet did it 20 yards further forward, with a plan, with balance & players interchanging & doing about 15 miles more running because of pre planning, such as resting Aguero, DeBruyne etc plenty in previous games, so they had the legs to do it on the night.

And crucially, with belief.

Absolutely fantastic.

I recon Pep could put out a side with Andy Carrol & Fellaini in it & dick Sam Allardyce at his own game. The bloke is a genius.

Fantastic effort from the players & a great spirit around the place. Great effort from the South Stand. With pretty much no worthwhile input from Barca fans, which shows we coiuld have an 'end' full of City fans & create an atmosphere without having to wave at fat geordies. Make it so.
 
Brilliant performance, and arguably our most significant result since QPR 2012. However, one thing struck me whilst watching the highlights.
If we want to win the CL, then we need to be a bit more streetwise, when caught on the counter attack.
Messi would never have scored that type of goal against a decent Spanish team, because Pepe or any of the Athletic defenders would have taken one for the team on the half way line. Similar for the move when Gomes hit the crossbar.
 
Was fearing the worse when we went one down with the ref's bias laid bare from Raheem's booking. Feared we wouldn't get ourselves together and back into the game against such a prolific opponent. The next 10-15 minutes we were a little shocked but we got our act together, realised there was nothing to lose and started to claw ourselves back into the game and it paid off.
Very happy to see the players wanted this so much, from Zaba rousing the crowd near the touchline to the TV's close up shot of Silva's battle cry to the rest of the team.
For the last 10 minutes of the first half and the whole of the second half, it's the best performance for me especially against a side of Barca's quality. We saw patches of this in the first game when we had even team numbers that we can play head to head with the best.
On a good mood for the rest of the week and downloading the full game to watch again I'm down.
Well done lads, fully deserved and every man out there pulled his weight and then some last night.
 
Scaring Europe to Death said:
Brilliant performance, and arguably our most significant result since QPR 2012. However, one thing struck me whilst watching the highlights.
If we want to win the CL, then we need to be a bit more streetwise, when caught on the counter attack.
Messi would never have scored that type of goal against a decent Spanish team, because Pepe or any of the Athletic defenders would have taken one for the team on the half way line. Similar for the move when Gomes hit the crossbar.
Click to expand...

Sitting on the floor when players run at you, is not the best technique either.

But all that is for another time I think.

We won fair & square in spite of all that, which is pretty impressive. And the narrative that Piquet would have rescued it all, is bollocks. He can't cope when pressed like that either & couldn't when we did it in the Camp Nou.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
There's a Hats off to City thread on Redcafé! I mean what the actual fuck!! If they had done this, I would have said feck off, cnuts! I don't want them to win anything, ever. The denizens of RAWK, on the other hand, are good and bitter. Now that's what I like…
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http://forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/forums/bluemoon-forum.1/
One of my biggest footballing regrets is that I grew up in a time when we genuinely did cheer on the likes of Liverpool, Forest, Villa and any other English/British team, even the rags the odd time they qualified via the FA cup, kind of wish I hadn't now.
 
Love the fact that many times last night we did not get lured into pressing their back line with too many men. When it was obvious the press wasn't on we sat back nice and compact and said "fine, you can fuck about back there all you want, you can't hurt us from there, we'll just fill the spaces you want to get into." We are finally getting smarter, obviously down to Pep.
 
Plain Speaking said:
Not read the thread. Was Pep berating Willy for not kicking it long in the second half? That's what it seemed. I understand Barca are a much better quality than most of the teams we will play, but we seemed to have abandoned the "play it out from the back principle" in that second half. I have no problem with that, it was very effective. Willy is probably not as accomplished with that as Bravo.

Pep has said recently he will not compromise his principles, this seems dependent on the opposition and players available. I love surprising the opposition with our tactics. It is a relief to see such a pragmatic approach from Pep. Fabulous win, delighted to witness history.
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Barca's press is a bit different than say how tottenham pressed us. It is mostly Busquests, Rakitic that push up high to press. We used more long balls yesterday as there was a lot of space vacated by these two pressing up and hence we won a lot of 2nd balls and started our attack from there. we still played from the back , i remember one instance where we had a corner and the ball ended back to willy to start the attack again. Besides Pep always uses long ball aganist teams that press well, Bayern beat Dortmund 5-1 last year and Boateng used long balls to brilliantly slice open dortmund defence.
 
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