City vs Sheffield Wednesday Post Match

[prestonibbo_mcfc]

Got out of jail really yesterday. If any game showed our vulnerabilities more it was this one. Without our really quality players our squad is certainly not what it is cracked up to be. I've been a big fan of Kolarov but yesterday and his last game have been terrible. Sagna doesn't look like the player he was at Arsenal and needs to settle into his role but I've not seen anything so far. At least Mangala and Boyata were relatively comfortable but again the entire back line was pulled across for their goal because of a total lack of diligence at the back. Even Kompany would of made zero difference I think, it has just not been right at times back there for a long time now. Everything involving defending for us often looks desperate and completely wild at times when it should be comfortable.

Certainly without our key players we look a very average team indeed at times, the whole game was flat for us without a single chance until Silva and Nasri came on. The important thing anyway is that we got the win but the way we are conceding at home must be a cause for concern. We need to start thinking about what we should be achieving in this transfer window because I do not think a striker is the answer we should be looking for. We need to start thinking of a quality left back, be it a full time replacement or a back up to Clichy/Kolarov, I'm not a big fan of either looking at the long term. We also need to consider whether our backup attacking midfield options are really good enough. Lampard does a good job which is fine but the bloke should be putting his feet up, not spearheading our attack, that shows really how frail we are up there. Beyond Milner who was already on the pitch, we are completely reliant on Silva and Nasri. At times we looked so flat and I wasn't impressed by Navas who can be so frustrating. We will be fine and step up in bigger games but the problems are certainly present in this team, especially and strangely more so at home.

All in all, good result but a poor, flat and worrying performance.

We do have a strong squad. Just that usually wholesale changes aren't made.
Especially to the back 4.

 

[johnstda]

Another game with a defence that doesn`t seem to know where to place itself. We need defenders that can read a game and have some sort of organization, not all over the place as it seems to be at the moment. The midfield and forwards are doing their job but the defence is letting us down..........you can see that by how many goals we have let in up to now.

 

[tel aviv city]

north stand -south stand goals

hi checked all the goals score this year at atihad in 16 games we score 34 goals '27 to the north only 7 to the south .even the burnly mach that caused us to attack the north in first half ended with 2 goals to the north - good? bad? jast a fact that 80 % this year. big difference between the sides

 

[BillyShears]

Got out of jail really yesterday. If any game showed our vulnerabilities more it was this one. Without our really quality players our squad is certainly not what it is cracked up to be. I've been a big fan of Kolarov but yesterday and his last game have been terrible. Sagna doesn't look like the player he was at Arsenal and needs to settle into his role but I've not seen anything so far. At least Mangala and Boyata were relatively comfortable but again the entire back line was pulled across for their goal because of a total lack of diligence at the back. Even Kompany would of made zero difference I think, it has just not been right at times back there for a long time now. Everything involving defending for us often looks desperate and completely wild at times when it should be comfortable.

Certainly without our key players we look a very average team indeed at times, the whole game was flat for us without a single chance until Silva and Nasri came on. The important thing anyway is that we got the win but the way we are conceding at home must be a cause for concern. We need to start thinking about what we should be achieving in this transfer window because I do not think a striker is the answer we should be looking for. We need to start thinking of a quality left back, be it a full time replacement or a back up to Clichy/Kolarov, I'm not a big fan of either looking at the long term. We also need to consider whether our backup attacking midfield options are really good enough. Lampard does a good job which is fine but the bloke should be putting his feet up, not spearheading our attack, that shows really how frail we are up there. Beyond Milner who was already on the pitch, we are completely reliant on Silva and Nasri. At times we looked so flat and I wasn't impressed by Navas who can be so frustrating. We will be fine and step up in bigger games but the problems are certainly present in this team, especially and strangely more so at home.

All in all, good result but a poor, flat and worrying performance.

That's certainly an issue. Our cup games against 'lesser' opposition in recent seasons have revealed our fabled squad depth to be something of a myth, and they've followed a pattern. Rest our stars, create nothing, go behind, and then end up calling Silva, Toure, Nasri or Aguero, who should all be resting, up off the bench to save the day - risking unnecessary injury in the process. Newcastle in the CO Cup last year, Watford, Wednesday.
A centre forward with real power and pace is still our most pressing issue, but whereas 18 months ago the talk on here was whether we should swap Nasri for Isco, now I think both (and Silva) would be an idea

I think there's an argument to be made that going back to when Mancini was manager, we simply haven't been able to come up with a cohesive passing team without our big stars. In some respects what worries me about that is that this is something which should be second nature. The way we play shouldn't particularly change because we're rotated to a 'shadow' team so to speak. Yet time after time we've found that when we do rotate and try and rest Silva/Nasri/Kun/Yaya we inevitably end up giving half arsed, low tempo, performances like yesterday's was until the substitutions.

In some respects this lends itself to making the argument that if we're going to start rotating in the cups, then we should consider rotating EDS players in rather than 'squad' players who for one reason or another can't function effectively without our superstars to hold their hands. The reason being that the one thing the EDS kids will give you is tempo and energy even if they won't have the quality of the first team players. It's almost a case of fighting fire with fire in the sense that the likes of Shef Wed will come with exactly that, bags of energy and commitment even if they don't have the quality that we have.

The other solution is to try and identify which 'squad' players are lacking in either the right mentality or the right amount of quality, and move them on and look to bring in players who have more of the characteristics required to be squad players. In a way it's hard with foreign players IMO when it comes to the cup competitions. Whether it's Kolarov, Dzeko, Fernando, or Fernandinho, I'm not sure that players like this will ever have the right mindset for the early rounds of the cups unless the team put out around them is the strongest XI available, and even then as we saw against Newcastle, it doesn't necessarily mean we'll get the performance.

I'm rambling a little bit but I do think that the 'balance' of the squad isn't right. We have too many 'senior' players who might feel they are above certain competition or they will feel affronted that they've been fielded when someone else has been rested for a league game. I guess it's a remnant from the old "two world class players in every position" transfer policy we had.

 

[OB1]

Got out of jail really yesterday. If any game showed our vulnerabilities more it was this one. Without our really quality players our squad is certainly not what it is cracked up to be. I've been a big fan of Kolarov but yesterday and his last game have been terrible. Sagna doesn't look like the player he was at Arsenal and needs to settle into his role but I've not seen anything so far. At least Mangala and Boyata were relatively comfortable but again the entire back line was pulled across for their goal because of a total lack of diligence at the back. Even Kompany would of made zero difference I think, it has just not been right at times back there for a long time now. Everything involving defending for us often looks desperate and completely wild at times when it should be comfortable.

Certainly without our key players we look a very average team indeed at times, the whole game was flat for us without a single chance until Silva and Nasri came on. The important thing anyway is that we got the win but the way we are conceding at home must be a cause for concern. We need to start thinking about what we should be achieving in this transfer window because I do not think a striker is the answer we should be looking for. We need to start thinking of a quality left back, be it a full time replacement or a back up to Clichy/Kolarov, I'm not a big fan of either looking at the long term. We also need to consider whether our backup attacking midfield options are really good enough. Lampard does a good job which is fine but the bloke should be putting his feet up, not spearheading our attack, that shows really how frail we are up there. Beyond Milner who was already on the pitch, we are completely reliant on Silva and Nasri. At times we looked so flat and I wasn't impressed by Navas who can be so frustrating. We will be fine and step up in bigger games but the problems are certainly present in this team, especially and strangely more so at home.

All in all, good result but a poor, flat and worrying performance.

We do have a strong squad. Just that usually wholesale changes aren't made.
Especially to the back 4.

Didn't find yesterday's performance worrying at any stage: it was the sort of thing I expected and I was convinced throughout that we would win the game. We did to Wednesday what top teams have regularly done to plucky underdogs down the years - we've been on the receiving end ourselves.

We all knew that we could bring on Merlin and Nasri and from the off they looked sharp so I remained confident our opponents would crack.

The festive period is tough and particularly unrelenting for the Champions when every opponent is desperate to get one over you. We've come through it well; what does worry me a bit is losing Toure but I hope his team mates will rise to that challenge as they have to having no strikers. I actually think no Toure this Jan is a bigger challenge.

 

[Marvin]

Another game with a defence that doesn`t seem to know where to place itself. We need defenders that can read a game and have some sort of organization, not all over the place as it seems to be at the moment. The midfield and forwards are doing their job but the defence is letting us down..........you can see that by how many goals we have let in up to now.

I didn't see that at all.

How many attacks did Sheff Wed mount? One for the goal in the 1st half, and a few breakaways in the 2nd.

We lost the ball on the edge of their box loads of times but won it back through a combination of poor quality from Wednesday and Fernando who is brilliant at closing down an opponent

Changing the defence means you lose communication, and you can see that the understanding between Sagna and Navas is not as good as between Navas and Zabaleta but that's an argument that they should play more together.

Where we struggled was in the speed of our passing and our creativity. Everyone in the ground knew after Wednesday scored the game was going to be a long hard struggle until Nasri and Silva came on.

I thought Pellegrini should have made a change much earlier but we got away with it.

 

[CAPTAINKIPPAX]

I'm not gonna give the team a hard time on this post for me we gave some important squad players a breather and got through so I'm sorted. However we have been shown up to be very ordinary in key positions using back up players I think during the transfer window in January we need to look at the bigger picture and vastly improve the strength in depth of the squad because we're not going to keep getting away with it when the inevitable injuries to key players occur. We have been lucky with a relatively easy run of matches last few weeks, it's glaringly apparent to me that some of this current squad simply are not upto the job.

 

[BLUEisville]

To be fair, it would still be possible to be offside if Silva were to have touched it even if Jimmy was behind the ball initially but as has been pointed out there where 2 Wednesday players between Milner and the goal after the flick on.

[bigimg]http://i57.tinypic.com/54sr9e.jpg[/bigimg]

Why is this even being debated. Clearly onside!

An earlier poster commented that the Wednesday player was off the pitch - that second picture clearly shows he wasn't.

It wouldn't matter if he was off the pitch:

"Any defending player leaving the field of play for any reason without the referee’s permission shall be considered to be on his own goal line or touch line for the purposes of offside until the next stoppage in play."

(<a class="postlink" href="http://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/laws/football-11-11/law-11---offside.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.thefa.com/football-rules-gov ... fside.aspx</a> -- PDF, page 2)

If the player was off the pitch he'd be considered as right on the goal line. And Merlin's touch came when Jimmy in front of the keeper, that's two. Never offside.

 

[cleavers]

Didn't find yesterday's performance worrying at any stage: it was the sort of thing I expected and I was convinced throughout that we would win the game. We did to Wednesday what top teams have regularly done to plucky underdogs down the years - we've been on the receiving end ourselves.

We all knew that we could bring on Merlin and Nasri and from the off they looked sharp so I remained confident our opponents would crack.

The festive period is tough and particularly unrelenting for the Champions when every opponent is desperate to get one over you. We've come through it well; what does worry me a bit is losing Toure but I hope his team mates will rise to that challenge as they have to having no strikers. I actually think no Toure this Jan is a bigger challenge.

Exactly how I felt OB1, never at any time thought we wouldn't win, even going into injury time, I still thought we'd win.

Passing wasn't great first half, but we had a passenger, defensively I thought we did OK, Fernando wasn't at his best but OK, Yaya was Yaya. Jovetic probably annoyed me most (other than the passenger), as he just didn't seem to be doing what was required, wrong runs, coming to deep when it wasn't required.

The subs were spot on, if one was a bit later than I would have done it.

Good result, and we've earned another home draw.

 

[The Future's Blue]

How did we get away with it, we scored 2 goals to their one with subs that changed the game. Isn't it a team game, not a first eleven?

Very much enjoyed the game yesterday, in the understanding that we had the fire power.