Didsbury_Dave was right

[the blue panther]

Well thank God Nasri wasn't playing when we played away at Spurs otherwise....wait a minute......no, home to spurs - oh ,no wait a sec...
nah, I must still be imagining this thread.

 

[Bluemoon115]

I still don't understand why so many are taking this as a slant on Nasri.

You're making a comment against something City, the masses don't like that, as you well know.

 

[SWP's back]

I still don't understand why so many are taking this as a slant on Nasri.

You're making a comment against something City, the masses don't like that, as you well know.

That's not the reason for the majority not liking it. The reason they don't is that it's simply not true.

 

[jay_mcfc]

FFS it is not a comment AGAINST City. If anything it is for. I am saying we, and especially Silva, are better without Nasri in the team at the moment. Not that Nasri is a bad player or that we are shit with him in the team but that we are simply better without him. It is basically the same concept as the Tevez situation earlier in the season.

SWP's back when I can be arsed checking it out I will but for now I'm happy to use my own footballing eyes.

 

[Heart.net]

How are we better with just silva? Do we play more fluid? Does he have a greater influence on the ball than with nasri together? Simply stating that we play better with nasri out of the team without substance is kinda weak.

 

[City Raider]

this is just nonsense

for every bad game silva has when nasri plays, there'll be a good game when nasri plays - there is no pattern

 

[Anonymous]

FFS it is not a comment AGAINST City. If anything it is for. I am saying we, and especially Silva, are better without Nasri in the team at the moment. Not that Nasri is a bad player or that we are shit with him in the team but that we are simply better without him. It is basically the same concept as the Tevez situation earlier in the season.

SWP's back when I can be arsed checking it out I will but for now I'm happy to use my own footballing eyes.

The difference between Silva and AJ and Silva and Nasri is more than anything down to AJ's limited ability to come inside and play. We started the season playing a nominal 442 which often ended up looking like this when we were attacking:

Richards.........Yaya......Barry.....................
............Silva....................Nasri......Clichy
.................Balo.............Aguero................

The idea being that both Sami and Silva cut inside and leave the touchlines for the two full backs to attack. It's inevitable when playing like this that both of them have less space to work in, however it's meant to create space for the full backs to work in so it isn't a flawed tactic even if it does limit the effectiveness of the both Sami and David as playmakers.

On Saturday it looked more like this:

....................Yaya..........Barry................
AJ................................Silva...........AK
.............Aguero..........Balo.................

So in effect Silva has more space to operate in because AJ hugs the right touchline and AK hugs the left touchline.

Funnily enough, the last time we looked as fluid as we did against Blackburn (and Silva looked as effective) was at home against Fulham - and in that game Nasri played alongside Barry in the Yaya role, with AJ and Silva playing behind two strikers.

I'm not sure what the long term solution. To be honest I can see Mancini sticking with playing SN/DS as the two advanced midfield playmakers when everyone is fit and we don't have fixture pile up issues simply because Nasri is a far better all round player than AJ (and far more creative than Milner).

 

[ecviper]

@Jay

really? let's look at the opposition shall we? It was against a Blackburn team that didn't attack until the end and tried to get a point from the start. You can't just say that after a game against such an opposition.
They knew they'd get beat and it showed in their performance. So if Nasri played we would still win and play well and may well score more than we did. As others said it wasn't the best performance from AJ. So you think we are we're better team with AJ than with Nasri?