Fine Margins, rub of the Green, and Shocking Officials

trublue55

Well-Known Member
Joined
3 Feb 2008
Messages
860
Ok, if you want to accuse me of having my blue tinted specs on, i will acknowledge in some games we have been poor, and in many we have not performed as well as i would have liked or expected, some of out team selections and tactics, have been, dubious / questionable / naive (please delete as necessary), but i've just cast my mind back over the seasons fixtures, where points have been dropped, and i've gone from personal memory, not searched high and low through the games for excuses.

Stoke (h) they score from our corner, and definite penalty for YaYa not given
Arsenal (a) both Arsenal goals should have been disallowed for fouls, and at least one def penalty when Wilshire played basketball not given
United (h) 3 nailed on penalties not given, one would have resulted in a second red card, (game still won)
Southampton (a) stonewall penalty not given (would have been opening goal, amazingly Aguero booked for "diving") game still won
Burnley (h) 2-0 up, first goal that started comeback, clearly offside
Arsenal (h) despite dominating opening, game turned on contentious early penalty, although we offered very little afterv that
Burnley (a) definite penalty for Zab in final minutes
Palace (a) first goal offside and blatant penalty not given

These are only my initial thoughts, and im sure there are many other similar instances

Next we have hit the woodwork more times than any other team this year, i'm sorry thats not bad shooting, its bad luck, in just about every instant , last night included, the keeper was beaten, but a fine margin denied us.

They say you make your own luck, and the harder you work, the luckier you get, but just look at Chelsea's last 2 games, ahead in both games, and pulled back by opponents to level in both. Both victories absolutely gifted to them, by otherwise normally reliable keepers. MacGregor lets a weak shot roll under him, and Begovic rolls the ball straight out to a Chelsea player, resulting in the winner. Neither of those wins came about, through Chelsea's hard work or skill, purely good fortune, gifted to them by an opponent

Sure, all is not right at City, there is plenty of room for improvement, not least of all in transfer policy for starters, and i currently have no firm views on Pellegrini in or out, (i suspect his future will be decided at the end of the season, depending on whether 2nd or 3rd is achieved, below that, and i think he will be gone.

That said, as the thread title implies, i honestly think a hell of a lot of our destiny this season is down to fine margins, the rub of the green, and shocking officials, and the sooner some form of video technology is used, (at least for penalty decisions) the better!
 
We have had some absolute shockers I agree but we know that already, don't we? That it will happen? The FFPs are proof enough that no one wants to see us dominate world football. Neither FA, nor UEFA and not even FIFA. We have to still win and manager like Pellegrini just makes it impossible when everything is against you. How I hope we still had Mancini here. We were never so limp under him.
 
The table never lies we are told on here many times.

Our inability to beat QPR, Stoke, Burnley x 2, Hull and now Palace has cost us 15 points this season....look no further!

We didn't get the rub of the green last night but neither did they at our place.

We can use whatever excused we like but the top and bottom of it is that the manager and players simply haven't delivered.
 
the whole point is we allow ourselves to be put in these positions

we are not putting games to bed where the above don't matter
 
When you lose 13 games after conceding first and in all those games notwithstanding the quality of Bayern and Barcelona who are clearly much better sides with arguably much better managers than we have and not having those sides score more than two goals in a game there is a fundamental problem with both the mindset and quality of the side as a group.

It's been well documented we are poor at set pieces and corners and we provide little threat from out wide all things that could and should be addressed but haven't.

Either our expensive players are poorly trained in the basics or just lack basic skills or management is doing little or nothing to improve the way we go about our game.

In any case changes have to be made both on and off the field.

Its nothing more than a change to hopefully address the obvious weaknesses in the playing squad and the inability of management to properly address these basic issues.

Margain , rubs and officialdom are secondary to overlooking the obvious things we don't have and won't have if we keep things as they are.

The manager needs to go and we have to bring in players with the ability to change games when we are behind or be able to shut out the opposition when we have done enough to get the wins required.
 
Aguero hasn't scored in 5 games, Dzeko hasn't scored in 4. The on form striker on that type of measure is Bony but he can't get more than 15 minutes. Couple this misfiring with a poor defence and it is no surprise we are struggling.
 
It's true we've not had the rub of the green at crucial moments both in the season as a whole and in many games specifically. However the league table doesn't lie and we are where we are because we deserve to be there.

The important thing now is the ensure we finish the season as strongly as possible and forget about making excuses. We/the club have all summer to figure out where things went wrong and rectify them.
 
Luck is only part of it, we'll ride that wave both ways when it counts. But, we're capable of controlling and making better chances and luck. We're not capable of delivering it though.
 
I accept most of the criticisms, that we have not been good enough, the table doesn't lie etc, but at risk of repeating the thread title...........fine margins,

i am not trying to turn the whole season into an if only.....

but from the examples i posted earlier, which i believe are just a small sample this season,
we would not have needed much of a swing in our direction to have been considerably closer to Chelsea, and to have been looking at making a far better attempt at retaining our title, than now looks the case.

I totally accept we have not clinically finished teams off, we have not come to terms with the approach of so called lesser teams, we have hardly ever came back from going behind, we are painfully slow in our build up (normally),
we are very vulnerable to the counter attack, our tactical approach seems so one dimensional, our corners are awful .... i could go on, and i dont disagree with any of these viewpoints. However, had a little more gone favourably our way,
then i suspect much of the criticism would not have surfaced. Football is a results business, and this season ours are not good enough
 
We have been incredibly unlucky this year, but we've also played badly. Last night really just summed up for me what happens when things are going against you. I thought we were actually pretty excellent, got it tactically spot on, yet somehow managed to lose the game. We completely nullified their flying wingers, we completely stopped them getting out of their own half and we limited them to as few chances as any team probably has to any other this year, while creating plenty of our own. Yet somehow a combination of uncharacteristically deadly chance taking from them, poor and unlucky finishing from us and refereeing incompetence conspired to make us somehow lose that game. If we played that game 10 times in the way we did, we'd probably win 9 of them by a pretty comfortable margin, but the balls just not rolling for us this year.

We've been well short of what we're capable of, but if you compare our misfortune with the rags or Chelsea's ridiculous good fortune, it's not hard to see why the table is the way it is. When no one is playing particularly well, the luckiest side will prosper.
 

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