lancs blue said:levets said:OB1 said:Look, I'm not a big admirer of Garcia and would replace him at the first opportunity but he is not shit. His lack of pace is a limiting factor and is reflected in the role he plays. In American Football terms, he's a special teams player: he is a screening player and he carries that role to pretty good effect.
A good appraisal to be fair...
To an extent. Garcia's main problem is that he seems to want too much time on the ball. It was noticeable when he first arrived but I thought it would change once he settled in to English football. That hasn't happened and teams in the bottom half will nearly always use a high tempo pressing game against the top teams and Garcia just doesn't handle that well.
LoveCity said:VOOMER said:How old is he? He will be gone in two season, if he last.
He is 4 years younger than Wenger who is still going strong.
Its the slippery little shit Tixxi who has the final say on selections.
You think Txiki picks the team every week? REALLY? He is a director of football - almost every top club in Europe with a few exceptions has one. Just like all of them, he DOESN'T pick the team. Do you think Sammer is in charge of selections at Bayern? Zorc at Dortmund? Marotta at Juve? No, no, and no. Just like at City.
Gods, this forum lately... I've had a browse at forums of two clubs with similar up-and-down starts, United and Chelsea, and they are backing their manager and team a lot more than many people here, because it's 1/4 of the way through the season with 6pts between 1st and 8th. Those eager for heads to roll should wait until the end of the season, rather than the first sign things aren't perfect. Remember our title-winning season when we fell 10pts behind or so? I'm sure half of the people calling for Pellegrini's head wanted Mancini's head to roll around that time.
By roughed up, do you mean be on the end of a potential red card leg breaking challengeflb said:OB1 said:CTID101 said:Champions league level.
FFS the way people talk about Garcia it is like we bought him from the fucking third division in Scotland.
Come on, you've got to be a shit player if you can only achieve the 2nd best pass completion stats in the Premier League.
1 yard or two yard passes?
How about successful tackles?
How about pace?
How about not bursting into fucking tears when roughed up by the mighty Sunderland midfield?
Give it a break pal, just perhaps Lord Pellagrini just hasn't a fucking clue what makes a top class PL midfielder?
Garcia was shit last season and he's shit this season.
KippaxCitizen said:We will play at least fifty-five games this season so we are almost one-third into the season and I thought I would discuss how I feel about Pellegrini so far.
He came to us with a bit of a reputation from his time in Spain. But I feel some have this reputation a bit wrong in their heads. He did not take average sides to the latter stages of the Champions League or to a title challenge in La Liga. I have seen that sort of statement a few times whilst reading through a few threads on here in the last few days. Villarreal and Malaga were far from being "nothing teams" or “average sides”. At Villarreal he had some very good teams with a good goalkeeper, three players that were part of the Spain Euro 2008 winning side defensively with Capdevila Marchena in the back four and Marcos Senna in defensive midfield, they had one of top attacking midfielders in the world at the time in Riquelme and some reliable and good goal scoring forwards. A few of those Villarreal sides were excellent. Top three La Liga and Champions League latter stages side all day. There was no "overachieving" there; they were as good as they showed.
Malaga were not as good as that Villarreal side but they had a decent keeper, a fairly decent back four, and in getting them into the CL they had a fantastic midfield with Toulalan Juaquin Isco Duda and Cazorla with a few average forwards. But that midfield was better than most anywhere in Europe bar the odd three or four teams. Granted they lost Cazorla last season but they got as far as they did in the Champions League because their midfield was just as good as any other side’s they faced. All while they underachieved in La Liga last season.
At Real Madrid he did an excellent job with what was an excellent team in La Liga but did not do anything of note in any cup competition considering the team he had, losing in the Round of 16 in the Champions League to Lyon and losing 4-1 in the Round of 32 of the Copa del Rey to Segunda’s Alcorcón.
He did about as well as he should have with each team he was with, probably overachieving a little in getting Malaga in the Quarter-finals of the Champions League but underachieving in cup competitions with Real Madrid. Overall the most impressive thing I can see was the team he built in Villarreal – they were a proper decent side.
In the Summer I felt that a top three finish and a decent showing of ourselves in the Champions League would be a good season for our first season with the new Begiristain/Pellegrini partnership at the helm of the first team. But they both must happen. A domestic cup win would be a great bonus but if we fail to finish in the top three it would not be a good compromise as we have to qualify for the Champions League every season since we are not a proper big name yet and i reckon it would be difficult for us to get our targets in the transfer window if we were not in it (Christ, we struggle to get them when we have qualified for it).
We have qualified for the knock-out stages of the CL, from an easier group than we have been in before, but we have already done the job nonetheless. I do not think we have played particularly well in any game apart from small stints away to Plzen and home to CSKA. In all games we have looked like we could concede goals. Plzen created and missed a string of chances in the first half at their place, CSKA too in that away game (it was only Clichy's deflection into Joe Hart's leg that saved us at the death) and CSKA scored two at our ground. I think we have been fairly sloppy and scrappy and not particularly impressive. Also in the Bayern Munchen game I saw one of the most naïve and almost pathetic tactical games I've seen from a City manager. Arguably the best team on the planet, with arguably the best manager on the planet, come to the Etihad and we play a high defensive line in a 4-4-2 against a 3-3-4/2-3-5. At times in midfield it was 4v7. It was so wrong tactically it was almost laughable but i was too disgusted to laugh. I am in no way saying that playing properly against a team like them would have seen us win the game, by no means, but it would at least have given us a chance to get something out of the game or even just not been taken the piss out of. Thank God Guardiola took it easier at 3-0 and took their best three players off because i reckon if they really would have wanted to, they could have hammered us. Pellegrini either thinks we are a better team than we are, or he underestimated Bayern or he has not got a clue. None of which are acceptable but hopefully he has learnt from his mistakes that night. We will almost certainly get a tough draw for the Round of 16 and it will more than likely be our last games in the competition this season but I am hoping we can make a better show of ourselves against a decent team and instil some belief into this squad that we are a good side and we will be back and better next year – and you never know maybe even play well enough to progress to the quarter finals. Although, going off our season so far I cannot see how we will progress unless something drastic happens.
We started the Premier League season with a good win against Newcastle and we have had really good wins and performances against United West Ham and Norwich. However, we have been anything between poor and terrible against Cardiff Hull Stoke Villa Newcastle(cup) and Sunderland. With us managing to get a win after allowing Hull some glaring chances at 0-0, scrape a point at Stoke after creating almost nothing all game and allowing Stoke a string of headed chances which they missed, digging ourselves out of a woeful performance at Newcastle and eventually going through, and deservedly losing the other games through poor defending and not creating enough clear cut chances. We have played poorly more often than we have played well. That is not what good sides show of themselves and is not good enough full stop to be honest.
A lot of that is down to individual performances of the players, unreliable players like Kompany Richards and Silva constantly getting injured and a few other things. But from what I have seen it is down to the manager more than anything.
Away at Cardiff we just got ourselves ahead and he took Navas and later Dzeko who had scored off, players did not know who they were marking at corners, we were playing a high line with a defender my Grandad would outpace and it was all-round just abysmal tactics. Against Hull we were being outplayed in the centre of midfield all game because we were outnumbered and he did not do a thing to change it. We were far too open against Stoke he did not do anything to stop their dominance over Rodwell and Yaya (outnumbered in midfield again). Against Villa he played both Dzeko and Negredo together like we had gone back 30 years to a midtable 1980s English team, we created no decent chances despite dominating possession greatly and putting dozens of crosses into the box for the two big men. That game was embarrassing. At Newcastle Jovetic got an early injury and he would have been our creator/possession retainer in the attacking third but even though he had Silva and Nasri on the bench he brings on Negredo to create the same problems as at Villa and low and behold we could not keep the ball and we could not create a chance. Woeful!
Aside from individual games: I do not think he understands that Yaya cannot defend to his best when he has got just one other central midfielder playing with him in the middle. He does not put a tackle in, ever, and with players with greater speed than him off the mark playing in the midfield of the opposition he cannot keep up with their movement and passing. Yaya’s individual problem is that he does not work hard enough in the non- big games but that is surely there for the manager to see also and that he is only properly effective in defensive mid if he is in a five man midfield, otherwise he needs to play further forward with fewer defensive responsibilities. Unless, of course, it's a big game where he tends to raise his game to a level not many can live with.
Overall I have not been impressed so far. HOWEVER!, as I said at the top, we are only one-third into this long season and I will not be giving a judgement on whether Pellegrini is the man for the job or not so early on. He may realise that we are nowhere near as good as many and probably he thinks we are, that our squad is severely lacking in quality once you go past our excellent spine (if they are even fit) and iron out a few things and plan out a few things to help us when we do have a few injuries instead of playing the same as if we had our best side out (our squad players cannot do the job our best players can so we need to find a different strategy until we get ourselves a squad capable of doing so) even when we do not. Plus at this stage we will not know if we will achieve our two main targets of a top three finish and a decent showing of ourselves in the Champions League. So the main judgement will come at the end of the season but we must improve and he must show more than sitting on the side of the pitch shaking his head.
levets said:lancs blue said:levets said:A good appraisal to be fair...
To an extent. Garcia's main problem is that he seems to want too much time on the ball. It was noticeable when he first arrived but I thought it would change once he settled in to English football. That hasn't happened and teams in the bottom half will nearly always use a high tempo pressing game against the top teams and Garcia just doesn't handle that well.
Again, a fair appraisal... no problem with these comments... I do have a problem with bells who say he is shit... per see. And enthuse over DeJong... Clearly he (Garcia) is not shit.. and NDJ in my opinion was a one trick. Good at it to be fair, but once the interpretation of the laws of the game 'changed' re tackling, he was obsolete.
And he could never have filled in anywhere else than his own position.
At least NDJ had one trick and as you say, he was very good at it. And I assume from the comment about NDJ not being able to fill in other positions that the implication is that Garcia can? I reckon NDJ could fill in fairly ineptly at centre back if he was asked to.levets said:lancs blue said:levets said:A good appraisal to be fair...
To an extent. Garcia's main problem is that he seems to want too much time on the ball. It was noticeable when he first arrived but I thought it would change once he settled in to English football. That hasn't happened and teams in the bottom half will nearly always use a high tempo pressing game against the top teams and Garcia just doesn't handle that well.
Again, a fair appraisal... no problem with these comments... I do have a problem with bells who say he is shit... per see. And enthuse over DeJong... Clearly he (Garcia) is not shit.. and NDJ in my opinion was a one trick. Good at it to be fair, but once the interpretation of the laws of the game 'changed' re tackling, he was obsolete.
And he could never have filled in anywhere else than his own position.
Marvin said:By roughed up, do you mean be on the end of a potential red card leg breaking challengeflb said:OB1 said:Come on, you've got to be a shit player if you can only achieve the 2nd best pass completion stats in the Premier League.
1 yard or two yard passes?
How about successful tackles?
How about pace?
How about not bursting into fucking tears when roughed up by the mighty Sunderland midfield?
Give it a break pal, just perhaps Lord Pellagrini just hasn't a fucking clue what makes a top class PL midfielder?
Garcia was shit last season and he's shit this season.
It's pretty despicable when City players are getting criticism for that
Garcia is a decent player. Maybe he is not what City need given that we have Fernandinho, and Milner who I think can both do a better job in central midfield, but he is a decent player.
He just seems to get the brunt of any frustration.
In general this topic seems to be a magnet for Utd fans. Suits me fine. Shows how much we have got under their skin over the last couple of years. They think the corner has turned. It hasn't. It's just a blip. Get eating, stretch your legs, because you're in for a long hibernation back under those stones you crawled out from.
flb said:Marvin said:By roughed up, do you mean be on the end of a potential red card leg breaking challengeflb said:1 yard or two yard passes?
How about successful tackles?
How about pace?
How about not bursting into fucking tears when roughed up by the mighty Sunderland midfield?
Give it a break pal, just perhaps Lord Pellagrini just hasn't a fucking clue what makes a top class PL midfielder?
Garcia was shit last season and he's shit this season.
It's pretty despicable when City players are getting criticism for that
Garcia is a decent player. Maybe he is not what City need given that we have Fernandinho, and Milner who I think can both do a better job in central midfield, but he is a decent player.
He just seems to get the brunt of any frustration.
In general this topic seems to be a magnet for Utd fans. Suits me fine. Shows how much we have got under their skin over the last couple of years. They think the corner has turned. It hasn't. It's just a blip. Get eating, stretch your legs, because you're in for a long hibernation back under those stones you crawled out from.
He was poor before and after that tackle, he was half decent v Chelsea because he had Fernandinho wiping his arse.
Please point out to me three decent games he's had since arriving?
The guy is a liability, its funny that now Manuel is manager he's become a decent player, he offers less to the team than what Barry did, who incidentally is still looking class at Everton.
Watched the Milan/ Barcelona game last week, although Barca won NDJ was up there for MoM. He was everywhere and showed how much he has to his game when needed.Lancet Fluke said:At least NDJ had one trick and as you say, he was very good at it. And I assume from the comment about NDJ not being able to fill in other positions that the implication is that Garcia can? I reckon NDJ could fill in fairly ineptly at centre back if he was asked to.levets said:lancs blue said:To an extent. Garcia's main problem is that he seems to want too much time on the ball. It was noticeable when he first arrived but I thought it would change once he settled in to English football. That hasn't happened and teams in the bottom half will nearly always use a high tempo pressing game against the top teams and Garcia just doesn't handle that well.
Again, a fair appraisal... no problem with these comments... I do have a problem with bells who say he is shit... per see. And enthuse over DeJong... Clearly he (Garcia) is not shit.. and NDJ in my opinion was a one trick. Good at it to be fair, but once the interpretation of the laws of the game 'changed' re tackling, he was obsolete.
And he could never have filled in anywhere else than his own position.
VOOMER said:KippaxCitizen said:We will play at least fifty-five games this season so we are almost one-third into the season and I thought I would discuss how I feel about Pellegrini so far.
He came to us with a bit of a reputation from his time in Spain. But I feel some have this reputation a bit wrong in their heads. He did not take average sides to the latter stages of the Champions League or to a title challenge in La Liga. I have seen that sort of statement a few times whilst reading through a few threads on here in the last few days. Villarreal and Malaga were far from being "nothing teams" or “average sides”. At Villarreal he had some very good teams with a good goalkeeper, three players that were part of the Spain Euro 2008 winning side defensively with Capdevila Marchena in the back four and Marcos Senna in defensive midfield, they had one of top attacking midfielders in the world at the time in Riquelme and some reliable and good goal scoring forwards. A few of those Villarreal sides were excellent. Top three La Liga and Champions League latter stages side all day. There was no "overachieving" there; they were as good as they showed.
Malaga were not as good as that Villarreal side but they had a decent keeper, a fairly decent back four, and in getting them into the CL they had a fantastic midfield with Toulalan Juaquin Isco Duda and Cazorla with a few average forwards. But that midfield was better than most anywhere in Europe bar the odd three or four teams. Granted they lost Cazorla last season but they got as far as they did in the Champions League because their midfield was just as good as any other side’s they faced. All while they underachieved in La Liga last season.
At Real Madrid he did an excellent job with what was an excellent team in La Liga but did not do anything of note in any cup competition considering the team he had, losing in the Round of 16 in the Champions League to Lyon and losing 4-1 in the Round of 32 of the Copa del Rey to Segunda’s Alcorcón.
He did about as well as he should have with each team he was with, probably overachieving a little in getting Malaga in the Quarter-finals of the Champions League but underachieving in cup competitions with Real Madrid. Overall the most impressive thing I can see was the team he built in Villarreal – they were a proper decent side.
In the Summer I felt that a top three finish and a decent showing of ourselves in the Champions League would be a good season for our first season with the new Begiristain/Pellegrini partnership at the helm of the first team. But they both must happen. A domestic cup win would be a great bonus but if we fail to finish in the top three it would not be a good compromise as we have to qualify for the Champions League every season since we are not a proper big name yet and i reckon it would be difficult for us to get our targets in the transfer window if we were not in it (Christ, we struggle to get them when we have qualified for it).
We have qualified for the knock-out stages of the CL, from an easier group than we have been in before, but we have already done the job nonetheless. I do not think we have played particularly well in any game apart from small stints away to Plzen and home to CSKA. In all games we have looked like we could concede goals. Plzen created and missed a string of chances in the first half at their place, CSKA too in that away game (it was only Clichy's deflection into Joe Hart's leg that saved us at the death) and CSKA scored two at our ground. I think we have been fairly sloppy and scrappy and not particularly impressive. Also in the Bayern Munchen game I saw one of the most naïve and almost pathetic tactical games I've seen from a City manager. Arguably the best team on the planet, with arguably the best manager on the planet, come to the Etihad and we play a high defensive line in a 4-4-2 against a 3-3-4/2-3-5. At times in midfield it was 4v7. It was so wrong tactically it was almost laughable but i was too disgusted to laugh. I am in no way saying that playing properly against a team like them would have seen us win the game, by no means, but it would at least have given us a chance to get something out of the game or even just not been taken the piss out of. Thank God Guardiola took it easier at 3-0 and took their best three players off because i reckon if they really would have wanted to, they could have hammered us. Pellegrini either thinks we are a better team than we are, or he underestimated Bayern or he has not got a clue. None of which are acceptable but hopefully he has learnt from his mistakes that night. We will almost certainly get a tough draw for the Round of 16 and it will more than likely be our last games in the competition this season but I am hoping we can make a better show of ourselves against a decent team and instil some belief into this squad that we are a good side and we will be back and better next year – and you never know maybe even play well enough to progress to the quarter finals. Although, going off our season so far I cannot see how we will progress unless something drastic happens.
We started the Premier League season with a good win against Newcastle and we have had really good wins and performances against United West Ham and Norwich. However, we have been anything between poor and terrible against Cardiff Hull Stoke Villa Newcastle(cup) and Sunderland. With us managing to get a win after allowing Hull some glaring chances at 0-0, scrape a point at Stoke after creating almost nothing all game and allowing Stoke a string of headed chances which they missed, digging ourselves out of a woeful performance at Newcastle and eventually going through, and deservedly losing the other games through poor defending and not creating enough clear cut chances. We have played poorly more often than we have played well. That is not what good sides show of themselves and is not good enough full stop to be honest.
A lot of that is down to individual performances of the players, unreliable players like Kompany Richards and Silva constantly getting injured and a few other things. But from what I have seen it is down to the manager more than anything.
Away at Cardiff we just got ourselves ahead and he took Navas and later Dzeko who had scored off, players did not know who they were marking at corners, we were playing a high line with a defender my Grandad would outpace and it was all-round just abysmal tactics. Against Hull we were being outplayed in the centre of midfield all game because we were outnumbered and he did not do a thing to change it. We were far too open against Stoke he did not do anything to stop their dominance over Rodwell and Yaya (outnumbered in midfield again). Against Villa he played both Dzeko and Negredo together like we had gone back 30 years to a midtable 1980s English team, we created no decent chances despite dominating possession greatly and putting dozens of crosses into the box for the two big men. That game was embarrassing. At Newcastle Jovetic got an early injury and he would have been our creator/possession retainer in the attacking third but even though he had Silva and Nasri on the bench he brings on Negredo to create the same problems as at Villa and low and behold we could not keep the ball and we could not create a chance. Woeful!
Aside from individual games: I do not think he understands that Yaya cannot defend to his best when he has got just one other central midfielder playing with him in the middle. He does not put a tackle in, ever, and with players with greater speed than him off the mark playing in the midfield of the opposition he cannot keep up with their movement and passing. Yaya’s individual problem is that he does not work hard enough in the non- big games but that is surely there for the manager to see also and that he is only properly effective in defensive mid if he is in a five man midfield, otherwise he needs to play further forward with fewer defensive responsibilities. Unless, of course, it's a big game where he tends to raise his game to a level not many can live with.
Overall I have not been impressed so far. HOWEVER!, as I said at the top, we are only one-third into this long season and I will not be giving a judgement on whether Pellegrini is the man for the job or not so early on. He may realise that we are nowhere near as good as many and probably he thinks we are, that our squad is severely lacking in quality once you go past our excellent spine (if they are even fit) and iron out a few things and plan out a few things to help us when we do have a few injuries instead of playing the same as if we had our best side out (our squad players cannot do the job our best players can so we need to find a different strategy until we get ourselves a squad capable of doing so) even when we do not. Plus at this stage we will not know if we will achieve our two main targets of a top three finish and a decent showing of ourselves in the Champions League. So the main judgement will come at the end of the season but we must improve and he must show more than sitting on the side of the pitch shaking his head.
100% on the mark.