Pellegrini was very slow to change things last night which was very frustrating. There wasn't much room he had for manoeuvre in terms of the team he initially picked. Some had said that he could've played the two Ferns and Toure dropping one of Navas or Sterling, but at home that was always going to be very unlikely. But coming out second half I expected to see changes and was surprised there weren't any right away.
Other than that not sure what else he could've done though in terms of his own set up. We won in part down to the changes he made in the 2nd half so the OTT slagging of him in the last few pages just seems pointless.
Same old. Not pressing the CBs - they pick long balls. Pressing them in an uncoordinated way - their midfield played around us. Outnumbered Toure and Fernandinho did their usual attack the ball and end up chasing shadows thing.
Midfield being over-run means Navas doing loads more work in the centre. He still attacked, but already doing two jobs he couldn't do much of the third, help the fullback by tracking the runner. De Bruyne was infield the whole game, so no protection for the LB..... who was Sagna, who wouldn't know how attack that side - his opposite number(s) twigged very early and just ran at him, past him, behind him, around him, through him. Same for Zab, really. Both were poor but both had been hung out to dry, and Sevilla made the most of it - they didn't just turn them, they turned them pretty much every way imaginable. If it had been anyone else but City playing it would have been fun to watch.
Sevilla also knew to go for the space between Mangala and LB. They knew Mangala is a bit rash and clumsy and often ends up not defending the space behind. They knew we often end up defending very narrow and don't track runners on the far post, so did that all night. They also knew the exception to this is where the fullback is isolated and the CB moves towards him so they played some great balls crosses in that space.
At the other end, they knew we would try and overload the right so had three players there most times. We couldn't switch sides (no attacking fullbacks) so they had men left over to cover when Sterling ran with the ball. Bony had no support, his confidence went big time. WIth no Silva, there was no way to hold the ball in their third.
Certainly the fullback/space between CB and fullback, and their being able to get round Toure and Fernandinho thing was obvious from the word go. I think that probably led to us cracking a bit, all the pressure started to show again. Everyone gets the willies, stops doing what they practised all week and all of a sudden no-one knows what anyone else is thinking.
Apart from that............. cracking night in.
The big change I was crying out for in the first half was to switch De Bruyne and Sterling. The "outlet" balls to Bony and Sterling's feet were bouncing off them and it kept coming back at us. As usual he waited until 60 minutes to make that change and it helped. I'd have made it much earlier. The "false nine" sub seemed an odd one and seemed to unsettle us a bit, but it created 2 or 3 chances as we came on strong in the last 10 minutes and of course made the winner. I'm not one to label every managerial change a "flop" or a "work of genius", because the truth is sometimes they come off, sometimes they don't.
We struggled with their 352 and them creating overloads in the full back areas. That's not a siutation we come up against very often and was a hard one to deal with given the personnel available. My take was to trust the defence, who I felt were playing well in the main, and use Sterling and Navas in the wide areas to exploit the space the attacking fullbacks were leaving.
The top teams have been winning games like this when they aren't at their best for years. Without Silva and Aguero I'm quite happy overall.
Yeah, for me that was also the one change I wanted to see at half time (swapping KDB and Raheem).
If however Pellegrini uses the fact Kompany did play for Belgium against him, it would be bad management as the way Pellegrini would make that issue more important than what is important for the team. I simply can't imagine Pellegrini acting like this; if this was to be Mancini probably yes.
I posted this elsewhere with regards to Vinny: I suspect that what happened and the reason Pellegrini is so furious with Vinny/Belgian FA is that we wanted him to start vs. Bournemouth so that he had 90 minutes prior to the derby, then a rest last night. But since he's returning from injury playing mid week ruled him out of playing on the Saturday, and also ruled him out of playing last night because had he started last night it would've been a risk to start him again at the weekend.
With his record of injuries I think we're reached a stage where we have to accept that he can't play two games in quick succession. Hence the signing of Otamendi.
I posted this elsewhere with regards to Vinny: I suspect that what happened and the reason Pellegrini is so furious with Vinny/Belgian FA is that we wanted him to start vs. Bournemouth so that he had 90 minutes prior to the derby, then a rest last night. But since he's returning from injury playing mid week ruled him out of playing on the Saturday, and also ruled him out of playing last night because had he started last night it would've been a risk to start him again at the weekend.
With his record of injuries I think we're reached a stage where we have to accept that he can't play two games in quick succession. Hence the signing of Otamendi.
hope they sort it out quickly - need him back and firing on all cylinders. Just look better with him in team -