City v Newcastle, Carling Cup - Post Match Thread

[aguero93:20]

An early lesson in typical City it won't do them any harm!

Quite a few kids near us giving puzzled looks to their dads, I'm sure they'll be back.

Good gate as well - 40,752.

I thought the attendance was really good given the context. We simply do not get full houses at this stage of the 4th priority trophy. I found the Newcastle songs about empty seats to be crass given their history of abandoning their team.

And then there is this lot, utterly obsessed with attendances, a phenomenon exclusive to their fan base of glory hunting parasites. <a class="postlink" href="https://twitter.com/totallymufc/status/527600979437703168" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">https://twitter.com/totallymufc/status/ ... 9437703168</a>

50,000 empty seats it's only...

 

[bondsman]

Both. Plus guardiola and Mancini for me. Starting to look like pellegrini has lost the players a bit just as Mancini allegedly did. No shape no heart no pace.

 

[Hoghead]

The biggest worry for me is our passing. It is dire. Too many passes going directly to Newcastle players and what I noticed more was that a large proportion of our passes are behind the player, this kills all momentum when we have a chance to play up the wings.
How hard is it to play the ball a yard in front of your target?

As it is right now, teams just defend deep in numbers and wait for us to turn it over.

Yep, there aren't enough forward passes. But for me there is a lack of movement from the players ahead of the ball, so that there isn't always a playable pass on. And secondly and related, I don't think we get enough players ahead of the ball at the crucial times.
Those overlapping runs from full-back were either non existent or ineffective tonight. Certainly LaSagna offers nothing in that regard.

Agree with everything you've both said, even MDM was passing sideways.
Sometimes it seemed I was watching England - no passing to and through the midfield, just simply sideways passing.
Though Jovetic was guilty of too many tricks and wayward passes, at least he moved the ball forward and attacked their defence.

 

[aguero93:20]

Both. Plus guardiola and Mancini for me. Starting to look like pellegrini has lost the players a bit just as Mancini allegedly did. No shape no heart no pace.

So Mancini lost the players but he's the solution?

 

[peter.evans]

What worries me more than anything is the lack of desire to not get beat. Dare I say other clubs fight from start to finish but tonight again it seems acce ptable to lose and you could see it was gong to happen within ten minutes. There isn't a culture of desire within the club to fight at all costs which is unacceptable.

 

[ninjamonkey]

bad spells can happen but what's worrying is Pellegrini doesn't seem to recognise the problems. He keeps coming out post match and saying we were unlucky or we created enough chances to win etc etc. Of course, this may just be a front for the media and i certainly hope so but each week he seems to stick with the same plan that so clearly isn't working for us.

4-4-2 just isn't working whatsoever. it's plain for everybody to see. The few games we've played alright this season we've played 4-5-1. 4-4-2 relies too heavily on wide players getting in good crosses, and having players in the box to get on the end of them. We rarely have more than 1 player in the box and we don't put in many crosses at all. The formation is far too rigid and it feels like we're cramming players into un-natural positions i.e Silva which causes further problems defensively.

opposition players can telegraph our play 2-3 passes ahead and can comfortably defend against it. Our play at the moment consists of the ball going out to the fullback, who squeezes it to the winger ahead of him. Then that winger is stuck with little space and no options so he goes back, yaya will usually pick the ball up, stand still for 4-5 seconds then spray it to the other side where we do exactly the same thing again. This is repeated continuously until we can either inch forward enough to get a corner or we get pressured into launching the ball forward and inevitably lose it.

We need to revert back to 4-5-1, it allows Silva to play his natural game which is critical to all our play and it allows some of the other midfielders a bit more freedom to interchange and actually move into space. It obviously offers a bit more protection for our shambles of a defence and we seem to play with a quicker tempo too which is severely lacking at the moment.

I've ranted on enough now so i won't even get on to our defending, i will just say however that we're never going to get it right defensively as a unit if we continuously rotate 3/4 of our defenders every single game. We need a sustained period with a first choice back 4 to allow them to develop a proper understanding.

 

[chesterbells]

What worries me more than anything is the lack of desire to not get beat. Dare I say other clubs fight from start to finish but tonight again it seems acce ptable to lose and you could see it was gong to happen within ten minutes. There isn't a culture of desire within the club to fight at all costs which is unacceptable.

Lack of desire not to concede the first goal is the more specific concern for me

 

[bondsman]

You asked who I thought was better. I think Mancini is tactically better. I don't think he lost the key players like yaya silva or aguero. Too often pellers gets found out and on Europe we look pathetic. Lose Sunday and I won't be the only one questioning him.

 

[chesterbells]

Both. Plus guardiola and Mancini for me. Starting to look like pellegrini has lost the players a bit just as Mancini allegedly did. No shape no heart no pace.

So Mancini lost the players but he's the solution?

Maybe not, but Klopp, Guardiola, Mourinho would all be an improvement IMHO

 

[gloryhunter007]

Tbf, I thought Nasri actually looked quite sharp tonight.