Discuss Pellegrini (Pt 3)

[George Hannah]

Yaya isn't driving through the middle in the way he has done in the past couple of seasons, however I'd wager this is due to a change in our tactical approach (or the lack of Kompany at the back) as opposed to a drop off in his abilities. Personally I'd like the shackles to be taken off Yaya to a degree, let him drive at teams as he once did. Quite how we achieve that whilst maintaining our defensive stability, and keeping both Silva and Nasri on the pitch, I don't know. Probably why I'm not a Premier League manager (well, one of the many reasons I'd suspect).

This is why calls for the manager to be sacked are premature.Though questioning whether he's the right man for the job is fair enough as far as I am concerned.
He's got to be given a chance to identify how to get the best out of the players and fit them into his vision of how he wants us to play.Yaya is definitely a player who has more to offer if we can get the right mix round him imo.I'm no manager either though.

the sooner we realise yaya is a great attacking mid and a poor defensive mid better

not on Sunday or on quite a few other occasions this season, Yaya seems to need Silva to bring him to life

 

[Skashion]

We spent money on players to replace outgoing ones. The ones we bought in the summer were all classed as a downgrade on the outgoing players. Whichever way you cut it, the money spent/players bought is an irrelevance and a total red herring.

I agree though that it'd be nice to talk about football rather than Mancini or dissecting stats to try and prove our away form is a shit. It is and it has been for a while, certainly in comparison to our home form.

Something OB1 has repeatedly posted but has been repeatedly ignored is that we are conceding a very small amount of shots on our own goal, and that you would expect over the course of a season for this to be reflected in the results away from home. The anomalous results this season (Cardiff/Villa) have been down to individual mistakes which for the players involved were uncharacteristic.

Of course this doesn't excuse anything because ultimately you either pick up the points or you don't. However it does go some way to showing that although the form is bad, it's fixable and I suspect by the end of the season it will be.

If you're talking about replacing players not replaced last season, yes, perhaps. Navas for Adam Johnson. Jovetic for Balotelli. That's fine, but then we cannot compare to last season's results. I'd be happy to say 11/12 is the benchmark to beat, we've got to improve from there. Otherwise, if we're comparing to last season undoubtedly this squad is better than last season's. In my opinion this squad is the best balanced squad we've had. We got pace on one of the wings. We have an aerial threat who is also a workhorse up front, and we've certainly got more quality long passes coming in from Fernandinho. Those all give us extra dimensions that we've not had before. If you don't agree that we've got a squad better than 11/12 (with Tevez missing for six months), ok, fair enough, matter of opinion, but there's no chance this squad isn't better than last season's.

I don't see it as an anomaly. We've talked about this before. I think the chances the opposition getting now are clearer cut, if you play a high line and use wing-backs there is more space and fewer players back to cover it. Ergo, we concede more.

 

[Anonymous]

Every time Kompany is out Yaya spends too much time baby sitting the defence.

I think the loss of Kompany, or more importantly the need to play Garcia at centre half caused this problem earlier in the season. However losing Fernandinho and sticking Garcia/Milner in centre midfield has also caused a similar problem as far as Yaya is concerned.

I really wish we'd kept Barry, he obviously doesn't offer as much as Fernandinho but he would keep the ball moving quickly which Jimmy and Garcia don't.

To be honest, I was happy with the decision to let Barry go. The squad is going to be pruned over 12 months and as such I suspect next summer it'll be Garcia's turn to be moved on.

I believe Pirlo is available on a free next summer. I'd have him in our squad in a heartbeat over Garcia.

 

[George Hannah]

well at least we're all agreed it's Pellegrini's fault!

 

[JoeMercer'sWay]

I know what you mean about the r/b position. I'm not saying sell Zaba - I'm just saying for me we should be looking for an improvement on him because he simply doesn't offer enough going forward.

The Yaya is on the wane poster is just too funny!

Yaya isn't driving through the middle in the way he has done in the past couple of seasons, however I'd wager this is due to a change in our tactical approach (or the lack of Kompany at the back) as opposed to a drop off in his abilities. Personally I'd like the shackles to be taken off Yaya to a degree, let him drive at teams as he once did. Quite how we achieve that whilst maintaining our defensive stability, and keeping both Silva and Nasri on the pitch, I don't know. Probably why I'm not a Premier League manager (well, one of the many reasons I'd suspect).

The different perceptions of players can be interesting. For me one of the main reasons we've not seen Yaya driving at teams is because since Fernandinho has settled into his role, Yaya pretty much plays alongside Nasri and Silva in the attacking phase of our play.

There's definitely an argument that we need another central midfield player - someone who has qualities somewhere in between Fernandinho and Yaya. I was hoping Rodwell would provide that but he's struggled so far with both injuries and also performances. In an ideal world I'd like to see us bring in someone like Xavi Alonso who can comfortably play as a deep lying central midfield player. I'm not totally convinced, but I suspect one of the reasons that Pellegrini has shied away from playing 433 is that we don't have a natural partner for Fernandinho other than Yaya, and Yaya is the player we're trying to free up.

-- Tue Nov 12, 2013 1:44 pm --

Every time Kompany is out Yaya spends too much time baby sitting the defence.

I think the loss of Kompany, or more importantly the need to play Garcia at centre half caused this problem earlier in the season. However losing Fernandinho and sticking Garcia/Milner in centre midfield has also caused a similar problem as far as Yaya is concerned.

You also have to appreciate that he's a 30 year old now with a big frame, it's going to take its toll on him physically especially 3 games in a week, not only that but he's got used to having such a good partner in Fern that being paired with just Garcia just caused a mess. It had to be Milner and Garcia together to make a 3 for it to have any chance of working on sunday.

There will be a clean out, I'd hazard a guess at a 1/4 in January and the rest sorted in the summer, will depend who suffers in the CL as to who we move on in Jan imo.

I know the manager should manage the team but I'd rather we play a modified Barca way than what Pelle's trying to do every game, so I hope that Txiki and Ferran put a bit of pressure on him to rein it in against all but the cannon fodder at home.

 

[Anonymous]

If you're talking about replacing players not replaced last season, yes, perhaps. Navas for Adam Johnson. Jovetic for Balotelli. That's fine, but then we cannot compare to last season's results. I'd be happy to say 11/12 is the benchmark to beat, we've got to improve from there. Otherwise, if we're comparing to last season undoubtedly this squad is better than last season's. In my opinion this squad is the best balanced squad we've had. We got pace on one of the wings. We have an aerial threat who is also a workhorse up front, and we've certainly got more quality long passes coming in from Fernandinho. Those all give us extra dimensions that we've not had before. If you don't agree that we've got a squad better than 11/12 (with Tevez missing for six months), ok, fair enough, matter of opinion, but there's no chance this squad isn't better than last season's.

I don't see it as an anomaly. We've talked about this before. I think the chances the opposition getting now are clearer cut, if you play a high line and use wing-backs there is more space and fewer players back to cover it. Ergo, we concede more.

It's pretty straight forward. Tevez, Balotelli, Barry, and Scott Sinclair out. Navas, Jovetic, Negredo, Fernandinho in.

In terms of the conclusion you draw regarding the goals we're conceding, although in theory it's true, in practice the majority of goals we've conceded have had everything to do with individual error rather than a high defensive line. That's why it's anomalous and that's why the shot we're conceding on our goal is relevant in terms of analysing what's going on and what's going wrong IMO.

 

[NQCitizen]

Yet realistically - Hart's dropped, Tevez is gone, Kompany is very injury prone and Yaya is arguably waning. Aguero supposedly didn't want to play under Pellegrini either.

Sometimes it's better the manager has absolute power than the players.

Yes, Yaya looks on the wane and Aguero clearly doesn't want to play under Pellegrini. We should've gotten rid of them all and kept Bobby giving him absolute power.

Yaya does half the time yes. Rarely makes an impact in games we're not dominating.

Aguero is quoted as having no problem with Mancini at all.

I'm not even particularly pro-Mancini I am more than willing to give Pellegrini a chance but it's impossible not to notice the massive regression in our results.

 

[sh249]

Re: Clueless manager

Must have got injured in the dressing room then, perhaps he slipped on one of his tampons.

To be fair, if he picked up an injury, it could well have been from Larsson's tackle. Which was brought about because of a hospital ball lay-off by Yaya, which in turn was symptomatic of his thoroughly half-assed performance - a performance which contributed much more to our defeat than Garcia's.

The whole point people are trying to make is Garcia shouldn't have even been on the fucking pitch, Rodwell and Milner are far more capable players who for that specialist position.

Perhaps. But then with Rodwell you have to weigh up (i) that he's highly unlikely to last more than 60 mins and (ii) whether he's disciplined enough to play the role. Against Norwich at home last season he was excellent, but the partnership with Yaya was awful and left us hopelessly exposed.

With Milner (i) Pellegrini obviously wanted to play him in one of the wide roles ahead of Navas, which I understand given that one of the major criticisms of him has been that he's been too attacking, especially away from home, and (ii) he too lacks the discipline to play a holding role (it is, as you say, a specialist role).

 

[Balti]

next 3 aways are wba, southampton and fulham

plus arse/ spurs/ scousers at home

how Pellegrini gets the team to react from this point in will be the measure of the man for me

talk of sacking is way too premature but the discussion about the mans abilities is perfectly understandable given our current away form and the circumstances that he was brought into the club..................................only results and ultimately silverware will change that

 

[Skashion]

It's pretty straight forward. Tevez, Balotelli, Barry, and Scott Sinclair out. Navas, Jovetic, Negredo, Fernandinho in.

In terms of the conclusion you draw regarding the goals we're conceding, although in theory it's true, in practice the majority of goals we've conceded have had everything to do with individual error rather than a high defensive line. That's why it's anomalous and that's why the shot we're conceding on our goal is relevant in terms of analysing what's going on and what's going wrong IMO.

Scott Sinclair? He barely played and there's no chance on this Earth you can argue Navas is a downgrade on Scott bloody Sinclair. He is a huge upgrade, and a bump up on Johnson too. Balotelli sold in January. Tevez for Negredo. Personally, I think Negredo gives us a lot more than Tevez, but ok, let's call that a straight swap. Fernandinho, upgrade on Barry.

As far as I'm concerned we're one-and-a-half players up on last season, Navas and Jovetic, with Fernandinho and Negredo representing a further improvement to the balance of the squad. This squad is better than last season's, I don't know how it can be argued. 11/12 is more debatable but not last season.

I'll agree to disagree on that point. We'll know if I'm right or not depending on whether we keep conceding more goals. If we can get it down to a goal a game average, I'll be satisfied.