Does Pep need to be more pragmatic away from home in Europe?

ak93city said:
After 2 failed tries vs a full XI man Liverpool, do you think he's going to switch to what he did vs Barca?

He won't. And that's my problem. He can do it to beat Barcelona with Messi but he won't do it in a knockout game vs Liverpool where we have to progress somehow.

If he was absolutely clueless to play in any other way, I'd accept it. But if he does the same thing on Tuesday (and his post-match presser saying we played good and weren't bad suggests so) then it's just pure frustrating knowing he could've done something else to just progress to the semis.
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Sorry just so I've got this straight (because I'm not sure I quite believe it) - you want to sit back and play counterattacking football at 3-0 down!?!!
 
The title of this thread amused me as Pep more than many managers alters his game plan and on field tactics to beat the opposition.

He did this last night and he did it to great effect in many other games this season - see Chelsea away as a prime example.

What was different is last night it didn’t work - for many reasons. The one thing we know about Pep, from all the people who have worked with him and know him, is that he will obsessively try to understand and learn from what happened. I’m guessing all the angst on Bluemoon is just a fraction of that in the Guardiola household at the moment; and let’s thank our lucky stars for that
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
What Pep did last night was play what could be called a pseudo back 3. Laporte wasn’t a left-back in the sense of getting forward and supporting Sane, as Zinchenko or Mendy would have done. He was a pure defender. Had Delph played, more likely he’d have tucked into midfield allowing Silva to support Sane. That’s worked so well for us this season.

That meant our width on the right came from Walker, who had a shocker of a game & got caught upfield giving the ball away for their first goal. On the left, Sane had space but did fuck all whenever he recieved the ball. The young lad Alexander-Arnold kept his head and didn't allow Sane to get past him. Leroy didn't help himself mind you by coming inside almost every time. Had he mixed it up a bit he could have introduced an element of uncertainty to the full-back but he didn't so the lad was quite happy to show him inside, where he had support from his midfield.

Gundogan didn't seem to know what to do, in a role he should never have been asked to play, which was a kind of old-fashioned right-half. That's not pragmatism; it's pissing about to create a system that had no discernible benefits and many downsides. Even Silva had an air of "WTF am I supposed to do".

He either sticks with the 4-3-3 or, if he wants to be a little more cautious (i.e. pragmatic), plays a flat back four (with Danilo at left back) and the two in the defensive midfield positions, maybe sacrificing Jesus and having Silva in the false-nine role he plays for Spain. Or Sterling. Or he could have KDB and the two Silvas behind Jesus, leaving Sane on the bench. What he ended up doing was neither one thing nor the other.
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Agree with this Colin. Exactly how how I saw it last night. When I saw the team I was concerned. You either go for it like we normally do or you keep things a bit tighter and perhaps go 4-5-1 or start Bernardo as a false 9 to flood the midfield.

The biggest surprise to me was that we couldn’t beat the press. I remember playing Barca at home when we won 4-1 last season and we beat the press by playing a bit more direct. Last night we did everything as Liverpool would have expected us to do.

Would have been really interesting to see Liverpool’s reaction if we had sat deep and played on counter. Don’t think they’d have known what to do.
 
domalino said:
Sorry just so I've got this straight (because I'm not sure I quite believe it) - you want to sit back and play counterattacking football at 3-0 down!?!!
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Frankly, the tie is over for me as I know we'll be trying the exact same thing as last night, maybe with Gundogan replaced by Sterling.

But, I suppose if he kept tossing the coin, hoping that he gets lucky on the third try with his master plan to beat Liverpool, we could get a result.
 
blue ranger said:
Agree with this Colin. Exactly how how I saw it last night. When I saw the team I was concerned. You either go for it like we normally do or you keep things a bit tighter and perhaps go 4-5-1 or start Bernardo as a false 9 to flood the midfield.

The biggest surprise to me was that we couldn’t beat the press. I remember playing Barca at home when we won 4-1 last season and we beat the press by playing a bit more direct. Last night we did everything as Liverpool would have expected us to do.

Would have been really interesting to see Liverpool’s reaction if we had sat deep and played on counter. Don’t think they’d have known what to do.
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Their press was intriguing and I posted about it last night. It was done very narrow with the front 3 starting it and then the midfield 3 sat directly behind them in waiting. It meant we couldn’t play our usual triangles to get out and Eddie couldn’t hit it to Dinho. All we could do was fire it to the full back on the line, then they would immediately pin that player whilst the midfield 3 drifted across as cover, consequently we either lost the ball or it went back to Eddie who hit it long. It’s the only time I’ve seen a team capable of stopping us.
 
On the basis of the thread itself, yes I think Pep needs to change the way he plays away from home in Europe, crazy not too with the record he has.

He doesn’t have to change his philosophy per se, he just needs to adjust it.
 
Rammy Blue said:
Their press was intriguing and I posted about it last night. It was done very narrow with the front 3 starting it and then the midfield 3 sat directly behind them in waiting. It meant we couldn’t play our usual triangles to get out and Eddie couldn’t hit it to Dinho. All we could do was fire it to the full back on the line, then they would immediately pin that player whilst the midfield 3 drifted across as cover, consequently we either lost the ball or it went back to Eddie who hit it long. It’s the only time I’ve seen a team capable of stopping us.
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Also seemed like our midfielders were dying to get forward and didn't really provide an option to pass besides back to Ederson. I think we can still play the way we normally do, but our build up has to be much slower to drag their midfield up and open spaces in front of their backline for our forwards.
 
ninjamonkey said:
No. His entire philosophy is built on the belief that his way is the best way and when executed correctly it will always triumph regardless of what the opposition do. The second Pep stops believing that is the second he loses what makes him special. Liverpool is the only team around that do what they did to us, I dont think any of the likely semi finalists could do that to us. You can say he perhaps needs to develop a varied approach for that kind of opposition but he'll never be pragmatic, nor would I want him too. If we get the football we've seen this season with the odd bad defeat thrown in as a consequence against certain opposition then I'll take it all day.
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wholly agree.
 
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