De Jong, it pains me

[VinceYoungisaBLUE]

While it may sound strange I am not that bothered about the CL this year because I dont think we are yet good enough to win it.

We are still a team under construction, and painfull as it may be to face, some players have not stepped up their game to the next level, DJ may just be still suffering the afters from injury, but if not then who else have we at the moment ?.
Because of that and Ya ya having a poor game by his standards the fullbacks got murdered last night, and while I could still justify hanging on to Zab as a utillity player, Kolarov is not up to the job at the highest level.

Nobody has yet dared to mention VK, who has looked shaky for the last few games, again our options are limited even if he is just having a run of bad form.

And yes,I think Roberto got the team selection wrong last night, but then he is trying to juggle players for the tilt at the title, and from what he has said is well aware that we need to bring in players to be up to going after everything, and that takes time.

Its still early days, and good as we can look now battering teams, we are going to get a lot better ;0)

How do you get that zab is okay, but Kolarov isnt good enough? I know everyone here loves pablo but he doesnt offer near as much as aleks

 

[keemcfc]

At the end of the day, if Barry was played instead of de Jong last night and we lost, people wouldve been saying that we shouldve played de Jong to break up their counter attacks.

Almost the whole team was off the pace, you can't pick anyone out that did any worse than the next guy...

 

[CaptainCarlos]

If I remember rightly, I and a guy called Lucas North got absolutely murdered for sharing these sentiments eighteen months ago :)

We are significantly less quicker at shifting the ball around, and far less potent on attack with NDJ in the team.

Nothing has changed in that department.

The one thing that he was always good at was protecting the back four but that's gone out of the window now. Obviously the full backs didn't help matters but the back four were offered virtually no protection.

Maybe now people will listen when I say that Gareth Barry offers far more in that role. He might not look as hard but he is a more effective player in a team that wants to add attacking football to defensive solidity.

I have been saying this for ages and been routinely dismissed.

Against a counter attacking team, he simply does not have the athleticism to keep up.

I think the word you are looking for is intelligence

 

[Deleted member 14625]

At the end of the day, if Barry was played instead of de Jong last night and we lost, people wouldve been saying that we shouldve played de Jong to break up their counter attacks.

Almost the whole team was off the pace, you can't pick anyone out that did any worse than the next guy...

Barry would have made little difference. We needed someone with pace in CM last night and we have nobody! Barry was as bad, if not worse, at Bayern than de Jong was last night.

 

[Dax777]

At the end of the day, if Barry was played instead of de Jong last night and we lost, people wouldve been saying that we shouldve played de Jong to break up their counter attacks.

Almost the whole team was off the pace, you can't pick anyone out that did any worse than the next guy...

We did not lose because of De Jong. That cannot be said enough times. We lost coz we played a team that was very good, and did their jobs as well or better than we did ours. And we didn't even play poorly. We were as good as we normally are. It just so happens this team is better at countering than any we have faced. This is a poor man's Madrid. They counter well, and defend even better.

Sure, I am a member of that minute crew (slowly inccreasing it seems) who doesn't think De jong is all that plus a bag of chips. He had an off day, but even an on day might not have chnaged much. It is unfortunate the goal came via his missed pass. But there were other misssed passes, and dangerous counters, that could have easily and should have led to goals. It is just how Napoli plays. They live for the counters. Whether it is off a cleared cross, and interception of a pass or a dispossession of an opponent. They will eventually get those chances. The only way to avoid this, is to sit back and let them have the ball in their half. Which frankly is not an option for City, as we have enough talent on the ball.

We lost to a better team on the nite. And even though Nige had a poor game. But those 2 facts are not cause and effect of one another. We may have lost no matter who played.

 

[uwe282828]

Dejong isnt suited to 442,end of story.if we`d of played 1 striker plus barry,johnson or nasri he`d of done his job.but dejong isnt suited to that system.

 

[City_Sean]

for the position he plays you need composure, and NDJ does lack a lot of that, personally its hard to blame just him, dzeko was anonymous, yaya was sloppy and silva didnt have a big impact so we should learn from this and concentrate now on liverpool

 

[Project]

Napoli don't really play central through the midfield. They always try to stretch play with the two wide forwards and wing backs, using quick, first time balls. Because of that Nigel's impact was lessened, as they effectively bypassed him.

 

[Sabster]

If I remember rightly, I and a guy called Lucas North got absolutely murdered for sharing these sentiments eighteen months ago :)

We are significantly less quicker at shifting the ball around, and far less potent on attack with NDJ in the team.

Nothing has changed in that department.

The one thing that he was always good at was protecting the back four but that's gone out of the window now. Obviously the full backs didn't help matters but the back four were offered virtually no protection.

Maybe now people will listen when I say that Gareth Barry offers far more in that role. He might not look as hard but he is a more effective player in a team that wants to add attacking football to defensive solidity.

I have been saying this for ages and been routinely dismissed.

Against a counter attacking team, he simply does not have the athleticism to keep up.

I think the word you are looking for is intelligence

That aswell, but say last night if Lassana Diarra had played his role. I guarantee he coulkd have kept with Lavezzi on his breaks

 

[thomasobDK]

lets face it, european top football is a very different game from premier league football.
both games against napoli and the game against bayern showed that we need to have players with other skills than it takes in the premier league. players like lescott and dejong have no place when we play fast counterattacking sides that can keep hold of the ball and pass it quickly to pacy attackers.

lescott and dejong is great against physical strong sides, but yesterday they were overmatched, and mancini should have known better taking the home game into consideration.

however i am not sure barry would have been a better option defensively, as he is also quite slow. he would have been better at keeping the ball though.

in hindsight perhaps we should have had yaya and milner protecting the back 4, it would have given us a bit more pace in the middle.

am not even going into whether we should have played clichy and richards yesterday, that was an obvious mistake.

i feel we lack a faster defensive midfielder and a quicker better ball-handling central defender when we play these kind of games, or we are going to have these problems everytime....