Love Jack's effort and it feels like he's getting better but his goals and assists output is shocking for a Man City wide player.Different style of play from the team now though, Jack offers other traits than Raz.
Beaten Arsenal on their own patch, beaten Chelsea away. Took something from Newcastle away despite going 3-1 down. Forest result wasn't good (although apart from the finishing it was an energetic performance). It took a fortitious decision to swing the result in united's favour.I really worry about our away form. We’re comfortably the best team in the league at home, but we’ve taken 7 points less than Arsenal away. Knocked Liverpool and Chelsea out of the league cup at home, only to lose to Southampton away. Struggled to break down RB Leipzig away, despite absolutely dominating the first half. And you’d think with Haaland in the team, we’d actually be better away because he’s the perfect counter attack player. You’d think also that’d make us better after going a goal up, but it hasn’t worked out that way.
Mate I admire your reasoning but for me I look at a career stats as a trend to where a player is at.It's the same tally as Bernie and Ilkay, one less than Alvarez and Kev and only two fewer than Mahrez. Coincidentally, it's also three more than any of our CBs as not a single defender apart from Joao has scored a league goal all season.
No need to single out Jack (yet again) for this as frankly the whole squad has struggled for goals apart from Erl (and Phil, at the start of the season).
It's been a weird part of our adaptation/transition process this season. For the last couple of years without a recognised striker, we could have six or seven players all getting around the 10 goal mark. This year, it's kinda been Erl or bust. Other players just haven't chipped in as much, due to the way we've been playing, and it's definitely hurt us.
I think a big part of the City fear factor in the past couple of years was the "anyone can score" idea, but now teams can focus on nullifying Erl and the other players simply aren't stepping up as much as they've done in the past.
Recently we've seen Jack and Mahrez getting some better numbers, so let's hope that can continue, as well as Phil coming back and maybe Bernie chipping in with a few more after breaking his long drought the other day. We need these players to contribute to kill off games and stop losing points needlessly, especially in this latter stage of the season.
The biggest reason is that the team outside of Haaland don't score enough goals. If we're 1-0 up and need to kill a game off, we're over reliant on him to score the goals. I believe he's not far off 50% of our league goals total. 1-0 is a dangerous scoreline and you're only ever a sucker punch away from throwing the game away.
Grealish is a tidy player and I like him as a footballer but 3 league goals in his position in this team is a ridiculously low goals tally. Raheem Sterling once got 20 league goals in 33 appearances from that exact same position. It's why my personal strongest City front 3 would be Foden, Haaland and Mahrez. The front 3 then all carry at least some sort of regular goal threat.
Villa away was as bad if not worse
We also had nearly half an hour against Newcastle to get a winner, that we largely pissed away passing sideways and backwards when they were absolutely on the ropes
Sterling conserved alot of energy by not tracking back and doing the dirty work.
He was on the pitch at times just to get in at that back post
Pep likes to say he hates the notion of tiki-taka as possession for possessions sake, but that’s what it has become for City!
We seem afraid to try an opportunity that isn’t a 100% dead cert goal that is not the culmination of 4 short passes inside the box! Slight hyperbole, but it illustrates the point!
We can be devastating on the attack, but rarely anymore. Foden’s whiff at Forest was a disgrace. Shoot OR pass, but do SOMETHING!
Haaland scores about 1 in 3 or 4 attempts, but he’s not getting the 4+ halfway decent attempts he needs, and we are ignoring about 70% of the traits that made he what he was when we bought him!
We don’t have a single specialist winger, with the closest thing to a winger who gets down the line to hit a cross being Kyle Walker! Mahrez wants to come inside. Grealish wants to come inside. Foden wants to play the ball backwards because he’s afraid to take on his man and lose the ball now that he’s lost his swagger.
So, where Haaland is going to get the ball from is anyone’s guess, and WE are making Sunday League center backs look like worldies with the service he does get!
Look across town, and you see a team that is quickly figuring out that attacking down the wings and the channels with willing runners is a winning formula!
I wouldn’t swap a single defensive player for anyone they have, but they’re keeping clean sheets with far greater frequency than we are, and starting to run up the numbers in games by never stopping attacking opponents…and using substitutions to great effect!!!
We are playing some fantastic training ground football, but goals win games and 2 goals win a lot more games than 1, with 3 winning even more than that!! With our current willingness to give up a goal, 3 feels like a minimum ask these days…and that is not a good situation for us against most teams right now!
Fortitious decision?Beaten Arsenal on their own patch, beaten Chelsea away. Took something from Newcastle away despite going 3-1 down. Forest result wasn't good (although apart from the finishing it was an energetic performance). It took a fortitious decision to swing the result in united's favour.