inbetween said:
With Aguero going off early yesterday I think MP might be looking to leave out Jovetic for now. Just the one striker for me and shore up the midfield so we can battle it out without risking too much. We can't afford to lose otherwise with Bayern likely to win we will be 6 points behind them and 6 points behind Roma which is effectively game over. I'm all for rotation but that can happen against Villa and not a crucial game like this.
Hart
Zabs Kompany Mangala Kolarov
Yaya Fernandinho
Navas Silva Milner
Aguero
That's the lineup I would use if I were to play against my team, not a 4-2-3-1 but a 4-3-3, I like it more overall. Then I believe for a variety of reasons, which I will list below here, City may benefit more from boosting the midfield with Milner than having 2 strikers in front.
First of all, our midfield is great even though Nainggolan he's dead tired, you need to be aggressive on the ball carrier to limit our maneuver and Milner is just perfect, also opens up room for Yaya's incursion. While with just 2 bodies in the middle one of ours will always be free to set up the offense, which is dangerous considering the tecnhinque we have at disposal in that department. We could put Nainggolan guarding Yaya the whole game too, a very interesting option to limit your offense vastly.
Secondly, our weak link on defence are full-backs, Maicon is constanly on the offense, basically a winger, but he doesn't defend. Cole is garbage, no offense or defence whatsoever, and will be a nightmare against Navas if he plays frequently the wide position instead of helping too much in the heart of the midfield, like he would in a 4-4-2 lineup. Anyway I believe Torosidis, who is decent defensively, will play on the left.
Thirdly, Djeko and Aguero's movements will be more readable playing togeher, our defenders could "just" take one each, also considering that Manolas and Yanga-Mbiwa are quite good in 1vs1 situations. Aguero alone instead spacing everywhere on the pitch is much more unpredictable and hardly stoppable,
Totti will play for sure, to much of an ego to bench him in CL's matches. I think he played today because it was his birthday and furthermore Garcia wanted the 3 points yesterday.
Gervinho vs Zabaleta should be fan to watch.
Florenzi is not best dribbler but will certainly bring the level of intensity up by a notch, besides that will help Maicon too on defence. Great goal yesterday!
P.s. Man on man defence against our midfielders is problematic for strikers because they always rotate their positions, zone pressing is much more effective.
P.P.S. Maicon has insane pace, I don't know what people here are talking about.