tolmie's hairdoo said:To say this, I have remained steadfast in my belief that Nigel is integral to how we try to play.
His recent injuries aside, however, I saw for the first time last night that Nigel looked a little short of what was required on the night.
I love his determination and ability to keep things simple, but he did look lost and his inability to hold on to the ball for longer than a couple of seconds, gifting the ball for Napoli's second, summed up a dog shit performance in general.
He looked small and irrelevant in the wider spaces around him, meaning Yaya got far too many little touches in the wrong areas for him to affect the game in the final third.
Yaya was almost acting as safety net for Nige, which no team, certainly one with the talent we have, can afford to carry passengers on such a stage.
Nigel wins the ball, he gives it, we all know that.
But against top class opposition, when you are forced to play without the ball, I'm not so sure he gives the opponents anything to ponder.
It's been mentioned on here about the failings of the full-backs on the night, but we never had the midfield.
IMO Roberto did our midfield no favours by also picking Dzeko as an extra attacker, but thought the challenge was made for Barry last night.
He would have kept possession a lot better and longer, earning hbis fair share of free-kicks to take the pressure off?
Sorry Nige!
thomasobDK said: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....
LoveCity said:De Jong has been very impressive in the last four games, all of which he's started after struggling for a place beforehand. To me he looks pretty much back to his best now and our aggregate score in the last four games has been 10-1, which might open the eyes of those who say he kills our attacking game. Mancini is visibly acknowledging his return to form by continuing to play him while Milner remains sat on the bench a lot.
difference is AJ starts bad ,might as well play with 10 as we as fans would put more effort inifiwasarichfan said:LoveCity said:De Jong has been very impressive in the last four games, all of which he's started after struggling for a place beforehand. To me he looks pretty much back to his best now and our aggregate score in the last four games has been 10-1, which might open the eyes of those who say he kills our attacking game. Mancini is visibly acknowledging his return to form by continuing to play him while Milner remains sat on the bench a lot.
Agree with most of that. It kills me sometimes that even the "Heavyweight" posters from the Forum try and pick a best Eleven.
It's a squad game these days -Like most I prefer Clichy to Kolorov but how good was Kolorov today, and AJ - the Forums other whipping boy.
ifiwasarichfan said:LoveCity said:De Jong has been very impressive in the last four games, all of which he's started after struggling for a place beforehand. To me he looks pretty much back to his best now and our aggregate score in the last four games has been 10-1, which might open the eyes of those who say he kills our attacking game. Mancini is visibly acknowledging his return to form by continuing to play him while Milner remains sat on the bench a lot.
Agree with most of that. It kills me sometimes that even the "Heavyweight" posters from the Forum try and pick a best Eleven.
It's a squad game these days -Like most I prefer Clichy to Kolorov but how good was Kolorov today, and AJ - the Forums other whipping boy.