Everton (H) | Post Match Thread

paulchapo said:
We are very flat and predictable at times this season. Although both players had their critics we miss the pace and energy of Jesus and Sterling, not to mention the goals they chipped in with. Mahrez and Grealish are too similar in style and a deep defence are finding them easier to cope with. Alvarez fetches some of that but at the .moment he loses the ball a lot which is why he's being used as an impact sub.

As soon as Rodri gave that ball away I feared the worst. The lack of reaction and desire to close him down was lamentable and a better team on the counter yesterday would have s ored more.

Given our changes to the squad this season I feared it could be a transitional one and it's looking that way. If Haaland gets injured where are the goals coming from? We could of course turn it around but if we lose three more points and Arsenal.win I fear it's over. It would take some collapse for them to lose it from there.
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I’d still like to see Alvarez getting more starts.

I think he can be a big goal threat, and in turn I think that’ll help Haaland even more too. The more goal threats we have, the more their defences have to worry about. Now they just know the goals are mostly Haaland and others chipping in with the odd goal. I think Alvarez could be a 15+ league goals a season player with enough game time.

He looks like a player that defenders could start to worry about playing against.

I like Mahrez and Grealish, I think they get too much stick at times, but at the same time I don’t think defenders are overly worried about coming up against them.
 
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Understandable gloom on here as it’s always worse when we drop points and the Arse win again. Fine margins again yesterday, Stones header six inches left and it’s a routine win.

One positive is that we didn’t commit the same hari-kari as we did in the Brentford game and turn it into zero points.

Arsenal are on a remarkable run, the sort that only ourselves or the dippers have produced in the last 5 years. They will have a dip from their current form, we need to dig in and be ready to take advantage.

I think it will suit us playing these hard games in the next month, less low blocks and more scope for a ‘proper game.’

I also feel that Pep has been trying to manage some of these games, not full strength and it’s worked in 2 of the 3 games. Maybe he thinks lack of games now will see Kyle, Joao, Phil etc see them be good to go to the end of the season. He needs to get back on the full strength team pronto.

Hopefully this result will kickstart a ‘what the fuck’s going on’ chat in the dressing room and we buckle down.

All it will take for a little bit of positivity on here is Newcastle taking something off the Arse next game and we sort out the Chavs.
 
OB1 said:
Opponents have changed how they defend since the season where Sane, Aguero and Sterling were ripping it up.

City may need to rethink things a bit for next season. Maybe the answer lies in what we do about full backs.

Perhaps we have to look to have an FB on either side who can overlap and cross the ball and use Rodri to split the centre backs to provide the back three, and get a box-to-box midfielder alongside him.
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Yep plenty to work on like I'd rather we got Phil settled down inside making the clever passes rather than having to impersonate a winger.
 
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We played alright, but not great, a few players were a bit off their usual standards. Everton put everyone behind the ball and scored a worldy with their first shot. They didn't create much and came to stop us playing, try and time waste and make it scrappy, they are fighting for their lives so I can understand their approach. We had chances to win it and pretty much dominated the game. The ref wasn't great.

We will be thereabouts at the end of the season. Arsenal looking impressive so far though.
 
If it was just this game then I wouldn't be too concerned. However, that's three consecutive home fixtures where City have struggled and it's difficult to escape from the sense that something isn't quite right.

Yes, we can still catch Arsenal, but this feels more like the 19-20 season.
 
Regardless of how or why we have failed to beat Everton or why we dropped points at Brentford. The club will support Pep to the hilt. No fingers will be pointed but a collective approach, holistic if you will -:)

The club’s strength is in the collective and I am sure we are working hard to try and get our season going.

As fans, we get upset and caught up in the moment and vent.

I trust the process and you only have to look at the success during that period.

Bring on the next challenge. It was getting boring winning all the time -:)
 
ono said:
Issue with overlapping full backs is what happens on the counter when one of them crosses and the ball gets cleared? We don’t have any recovery pace in midfield with Rodri, KDB, Silva and Gundogan. Playing with overlapping full backs would be a risk with our current squad profile.
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I'm talking about next season and thinking that one of Bernie and Gundo goes, plus some other changes in the squad.

Regardless of squad composition, you deal with transitions effectively by having players correctly positioned. Positional play is core to all that we do.
 
ono said:
Issue with overlapping full backs is what happens on the counter when one of them crosses and the ball gets cleared? We don’t have any recovery pace in midfield with Rodri, KDB, Silva and Gundogan. Playing with overlapping full backs would be a risk with our current squad profile.
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We are currently playing with a full back in central mid leaving no cover on the right - not sure how it's worse
 
Rammy Blue said:
God forbid we actually sign a decent left footed left back.
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What a novel idea!

I'd no dobut be classed as a happy clapper or some such but I am annoyed that we do not seem to be making that an absolute priority for this window. Just hoping that City are trying to do something under the radar but not expecting them to.
 
Feed the Elk said:
Nah. Their goal came about because Rodri was forced into a pass he didn’t want to make which allowed Everton to intercept and break on us.
Can’t blame the defence for conceding one chance when the attacking game produced so many opportunities that we didn’t take advantage of
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Not interested in blaming people but I think the defenders could have done better. There were cumulative errors, which is, I think, often the casw whne we concede and that has to be avoided. Mistakes will happen but when one has occurred, it is imperative not to compund the issue.
 
We are too cautious. Yesterday we should have had an extra forward on from the start probably Alvarez.We know they are going to defend so let's use more attackers give em something to think more about
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Actually I do think that's a problem. Many, many teams have known how to score one goal and then see the game out. May be boring, but you should know how to do it. Clean sheets have become a rare thing with us. We had several in October, and they've been diminishing since. Look at our results in November and December. Especially in the league.
It's a problem, and the team and manager should be worried about it.
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Of course its not great that we concede more than usual, but if we only concede 0.08 xG like yesterday thats really good and so low its more or less impossible to concede fewer chances. I see it as a far bigger issue that we are not creating enough against a prime relegation candidate at home. If you allow one shot on goal there is always that small chance of it going in. Thats why you have to create a lot more chances yourself to make sure a win is not dependent on such small margins. At least not against teams like Everton at home.
 
jimharri said:
Lots of seldom seen posters offering their opinions on the game, and our title chances. Which is fine. They're perfectly entitled to do so. It is a forum, after all. My question would be, why weren't they offering opinions in the Centurions' season? Or the fourmidables campaign? Maybe, shock horror, they get more pleasure in complaining, rather than complimenting?
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Live and let live.....Nowt stranger than folk.
 
I wonder if the players will be having a meeting like when Ferna got them together a few seasons ago. They can't be happy with what they're seeing either.
 
1 shot on goal, 1 goal. I've seen this game countless times before and we're still no closer to cracking this particular nut.

You could see early on this was likely to happen with just no real energy, just passing it about for passings sake at times. I know why we do it but we barely created anything and had zero energy either. No wonder Haaland was frustrated and was lucky with that sliding challenge and at first sight it looked like a red to me.

Grealish and Mahrez offered very little down the flanks as usual. I've said it before about Grealish but he's a good player, but isn't the player for us. I think he's under instruction not to lose the ball, but why buy a player who's game is dribbling? He offered next to no attacking threat at all. He's not a goalscorer and barely creates anything. He needs to go to a team where they will play to his strengths. Mahrez is Mahrez and is capable of brilliance and absolutely nothing. Poor old Lewis has his work cut out behind Mahrez!

We look so out of sorts at times, I'm sure it's the system. We rarely have games where one player has a poor game, it's usually the whole team like we saw yesterday.

If we're not careful, we risk letting Liverpool catch us up, as well as Arsenal get a bumper lead. There's also a number of teams like United, Newcastle and Spurs who are all going to have very good seasons.We need to start a nice run and I think we're going to need 90 points again.

It was a real disappointing end to the year, hopefully this is a kick up the arse for Pep.
 
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OB1 said:
I'm not sure what happened. The only video I've watched is the short highlights on the City website, I couldn't be doing with MotD etc yesterday. I suspect they got caught out by Gray stopping, which I'm not sure was clever or just a case of him not being sure what to do, but after his slip he found he had time and space to shoot.

Maybe Stones though the ball would go wide and was looking to position himself to deal with that.

Bottom line is someone should have closed Gray down. Annoying thing is that, even so, 9 out of 10 times, he would not have hit a shot that good.

I've not seen the error that gave them the ball in the first place on video but IIRC it was Rodri, who doesn't often lose the ball in bad positions.

All in all, despite not being at our best, City were very unfortunate to drop points yesterday. I've tried to wipe Brentford from memory but that's still for me the only game where an opponent took points off us that were all merited and that is despite us not finding our best form this season.

City do need to raise their game somewhat but we also need the breaks to even out: we do not have a single point on the board that has not been merited. Newcastle gave us a tough game at their place but were hanging on with their fans begging for the whistle at the end.

Every game is a big game for us, because it always seems like we cannot afford to drop points and are going to need near record breaking totals to win the damn league, but the next few games really are BIG and will tell us a lot about where our team really is at this season. Arsenal have only dropped points in two games so far this season and if they can keep that up, we'll just have to make sure Arteta can be persuaded to come back to City when Pep leaves.
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Yeah I think we will know more by the end of January one way or another.
 
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