City v West Ham CoC Semi-Final 1st Leg Post Match Thread

[ahoyhoy]

full marks to the west ham fans. they were brilliant throughout. as we knew they would be. proper club.

They showed a lot of class. I know they're not happy with their choice of manager. All I can say to them is we survived Alan Ball. Thats Alan fecking Ball. They'll be back. I have a soft spot for West Ham even since the days of Alan Devonshire. Our defence has improved since then but I'm not sure theirs has

 

[remember arthur mann]

full marks to the west ham fans. they were brilliant throughout. as we knew they would be. proper club.

Seconded, well done hammer travellers.
Re game - listened to it at work, hammers constantly being slagged for an abject performance by both talkshite and five live.
Nicely surprised watching the match later, it wasn't through lack of effort by West Ham, City just too classy.

 

[George Hannah]

full marks to the west ham fans. they were brilliant throughout. as we knew they would be. proper club.

Seconded, well done hammer travellers.
Re game - listened to it at work, hammers constantly being slagged for an abject performance by both talkshite and five live.
Nicely surprised watching the match later, it wasn't through lack of effort by West Ham, City just too classy.

I found their southern conversation quite diverting post match

 

[blueinsa]

We where once again simply magnificent. The passing and movement is something to behold at times and teams simply cant live with us when we are on it like last night.

Football at its very best and football thats played with a smile.

Happy days.

 

[cleavers]

We were good last night but I think the fact West Ham were so appalling made our performance look a lot better.
We have performed better than that this season in fact a lot better and the saying goes you can only beat what put in front of you. It was a big fat sam team though so happy days

We have been hearing this all season. United, Spurs, Norwich, Moscow etc.

In reality when we click we make teams look appalling.

I sense I'm not the only one fed up of hearing "we only looked so good because xxxxx were awful".

We look so good because we are so good, and we're making decent opposition look poor. It doesn't click every week, no team ever has, but we're giving it a damned good try. Apart from the first 10 minutes last night, our pass and move football was as good as anything I have ever watched from any club. West Ham started brightly I thought, they certainly weren't beaten before they came onto the pitch.

We allowed them to have the ball at the start, and I suspect they thought it wasn't going to be as hard to attack us, as they had imagined, once we'd taken the lead we were utterly merciless, and its little wonder that they effectively gave up after half time.

So many things to like, one thing that impresses me is the way we even seem able to take a rest during games by just playing keep ball for 1 or 2 minutes, keeping the ball moving in a small area of the pitch at walking pace, but giving the other team no chance to get the ball off us, before going at it again at pace. The other thing that impresses me is the improvement in our players like Nasri, Kolorov, Milner, and I'm now seeing the same improvement in Dzeko, his smile is back, his workrate is back where it was when he first joined. The sheer pace we can play at compared to how slow we were playing a year ago, but its not because we're running faster, its because we are using our skills far more intelligently.

I really do wish people would stop saying its only because the other team are so poor, and actually give credit to what our team is actually producing, its briliant, not really any other word for it.

 

[blueinsa]

We were good last night but I think the fact West Ham were so appalling made our performance look a lot better.
We have performed better than that this season in fact a lot better and the saying goes you can only beat what put in front of you. It was a big fat sam team though so happy days

Shame on you for coming out with such absurd nonsence!

Do some people log on with the sole aim of going against the grain and tryng to be different?

 

[BoyBlue_1985]

We were good last night but I think the fact West Ham were so appalling made our performance look a lot better.
We have performed better than that this season in fact a lot better and the saying goes you can only beat what put in front of you. It was a big fat sam team though so happy days

Shame on you for coming out with such absurd nonsence!

Do some people log on with the sole aim of going against the grain and tryng to be different?

Yes thats me.

In fact all of you having a go, im not the only one that has said this on here.
West Ham were appalling. I never agreed with the whole "they were poor" media any of the other times we walloped teams as we dismantled them as we did West Ham but at least the other teams looked like they wanted to have a go, West Ham came for damage limitation last night and got what they deserved because of that. We rip the heart out of teams at home with our range of passing, movement, speed and sublime touch and skill but there was no heart to rip out of West Ham yesterday they left in the away end Of Nottingham Forest

Oh and Cleavers I totally agree with you by the way

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Several people have mentioned the Beast's first, so I won't go on about it, except to say that, technically, that is one of the most difficult imaginable strikes to carry out successfully. Anybody who's played football at any level knows that.
But the second interests me even more, because it says something about the character of the man. Beautiful through ball from Dzeko (er, Dzeko and Negredo can't play together? is anybody still saying that?), and in fact, Negredo's first touch was poor. I thought he'd fluffed the chance, myself, but he put in that extra little bit of shift that makes the difference — by the way, his acceleration over eight to ten yards must be comparable to Sergio's in fact, that's not something that any of us quite realized at the start of the season — he gets to the ball first, doesn't hit it particularly well, because he's stretched, but it's a power goal, like the one against Liverpool. So the first is a masterpiece of technique, the second a masterpiece of power. This guy has to be the buy of the season in the PL, and arguably in Europe.
It didn't matter by then, but the last goal was an absolute peach. Having skied several shots which he really should have had on target, Edin finally connected perfectly, and when he does, there's nothing that any keeper in the world can do about it. But those two touches before it, taken with Edin's strike concluding the movement, make it perhaps the most superb goal of the game (and there were several): whoever put that ball through to Kolarov — was it Silva, I wasn't sure? — then Kolarov's cutback., then Edin's volley. When we play like that, we simply slice teams open. It reminds me of some of the moves of the 68-71 team, when they were absolutely on top form.
Yes, West Ham were weak. But they are professional footballers in the world's most difficult league, the PL. By definition, they are part of an elite that concerns a few hundred athletes at the most. And they were made to look like amateurs. We ran rings around them as Bayern ran rings around us in the Etihad game. How does that happen?? Does me head in at times. Anyway, say it to yourself one more time: at times this season, you are watching the sexiest football being produced in the PL, hands down.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Barcelona mentioning this victory on their official twitter. Is this normal practice?

<a class="postlink" href="https://twitter.com/FCBarcelona/status/421069723091369984" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">https://twitter.com/FCBarcelona/status/ ... 3091369984</a>

Was down in Seville before the Christmas break — what a terrific town, by the way — and spoke to a Barcelona fan who told me that they were quite worried. In the same bar, I spoke to a Real fan, and in so far as my bad Spanish allowed me to understand, he said to me, "Murder them for us, would you?"

 

[wagonman]

Thanks for the link pominoz...

You enabled me to experience the joy of those goals... over and over again (unlike other joyous experiences I used to have in an earlier life).

JJ