Fine Margins, rub of the Green, and Shocking Officials

[jimmygrimblesboots]

What the chances of us not conceding a dodgy penalty , or an offside goal or a 35 yard wonder goal flying into the top corner ,on Sunday ? With our current run of luck ..............zero.

 

[Mike D]

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!

Sorry mate it doesn't work for me last night was all about who wanted the most Palace did they won.

Pellegrini again got it wrong last night playing 442 and not playing Milner like he has against a lot of these lesser teams.

 

[Trautmannesque]

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!

An excellent post and it's hard to disagree with any of that. You could add in a terrible non penalty decision against Boro with the score at 0-0. If old fatty had been able to keep up with play, we could well still be in the cup too.

To balance against that , we were lucky against Everton (a dodgy pen and Mangala should've seen red) and Palace had a good goal ruled out at 2-0 at our place. I really can't think of anything else going in our favour this season so yes we've been incredibly unlucky.

 

[Deleted member 58678]

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.

Spot on! It's got nowt to do with shit officiating, bad pitches, FFPR, bad floodlights, the agenda, conspiracy theories, the illuminate, this made up thing called "luck" that people like to blame every now and again nor the Easter fucking Bunny.......from start to finish this season, bar the odd game, we have been very poor for a so called elite side. We have passed the ball far too slowly, we get more set pieces in the opponents last third than any side in the league and we do fuck all with them, we are set up in a way that when we lose the ball we are wide open and our defence is exposed (we don't cynically foul nor hunt the ball back high up the pitch so are just attacked when we lose it), we have no energy in our play at all which allows defences to get set up to stop us cutting through them....we are boring to watch as well. Management team and playing team and DoF have not done a good enough job at this football club this season and all should be held accountable for the worst season since Hughes was here (in fact we'd only lost two games when Hughes got sacked at Christmas). Nothing more, nothing less than that.

It is OUR fault, WE are to blame, nobody else!

 

[Deleted member 58678]

What the chances of us not conceding a dodgy penalty , or an offside goal or a 35 yard wonder goal flying into the top corner ,on Sunday ? With our current run of luck ..............zero.

Well let's get some magic fairy dust and a few wizards wands out to counter this bad "luck" (that doesn't exist)...i suppose those blaming luck also believe it fate and destiny and that the magic sponge/spray actually exists too eh?

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

I would say that we are probably due a good dollop of fortune, and we might need it to stay top 4 - but it shouldn't detract from what the real problem is, too many star players underperforming (Yaya, Zabs, Nasri, Dzeko and Kompany). Some people are blaming the manager for sticking with his playing style, but he could argue he expected these highly paid professionals to eventually turn their forms around, which is what everyone thought would happen.

 

[Carver]

Hitting the woodwork and it not going in is not a shot on target. Where do we stop, if it's inside the edge of the six yard box?

The drive through the middle in the final third is missing. I would put this down to pellegrini choosing players that are skilful rather than those with bite. The skilful players are wearing themselves out chasing back and although it's a team effort centre mid and the backs did this before. Our defensive slip ups are down to players being there who can't put a strong clean tackle in and those that can are under performing.

 

[FanchesterCity]

Hitting the post is a miss. Nothing unlucky about it. Is going just wide of the post a bit less unlucky, or even more unlucky?

Misfortune is usually very unpredictable. There's nothing unpredictable about us. We've not been good enough. We've turned up for some games, and not for others. We haven't come away from game after game screaming about injustice, we've come away knowing damn well we put in a poor performance, and over the course of a season we can measure it by our league position.

We are 4th. That's where we belong. If we can rally to the end of the season and snatch 3rd or even second, then great. But the table doesn't lie.

 

[Newman Noggs]

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

I agree with you completely. Playing poorly is one thing but playing poorly and being unlucky is a recipe for disaster. Funnily enough, apart from the episodes you mention it's the rags winning goal at Newcastle that sticks in my memory. 89th minute and Krul inexplicably passes it to Young in the middle of the goal who rolls it into an empty net. 3 points thank you.

I thought the heads began to go down when Kun hit the post last night which is inexcusable but partly understandable when nothing is going right. Conversely, it must be a real boost when you know that no matter how sh*t you are, at some point you'll be gifted a penalty, own goal, deflection or whatever.

 

[trublue55]

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

I agree with you completely. Playing poorly is one thing but playing poorly and being unlucky is a recipe for disaster. Funnily enough, apart from the episodes you mention it's the rags winning goal at Newcastle that sticks in my memory. 89th minute and Krul inexplicably passes it to Young in the middle of the goal who rolls it into an empty net. 3 points thank you.

I thought the heads began to go down when Kun hit the post last night which is inexcusable but partly understandable when nothing is going right. Conversely, it must be a real boost when you know that no matter how sh*t you are, at some point you'll be gifted a penalty, own goal, deflection or whatever.

remarkably similar, to an otherwise reliable Begovic rolling the ball straight out to a Chelsea player, who moved forward 10 yards, then squared it to teammate who passed it into the empty net. 3 points gifted