Pep will ruin any sort of creativity he has. cant see players like him wanting to join us
Sadly, I think you’ve hit on a very salient point that is overlooked by many.
The way City play is stifling for most world class players. I give you Haaland as a prime example and also the way Grealish and Foden, two great English hopes, have seemingly died on the vine at City.
Players want to play exciting football for exciting teams. They want to express themselves, not be strapped into a “round peg, round hole” framework where their natural talents are stifled.
Pep has absolutely revolutionized football with some of his tactics, especially the sweeper keeper and the inverted fullbacks, which always seeks to overload the opposition and create an open man.
HOWEVER, it has become stale, pedestrian, boring, and, quite frankly, easy to overcome by even the most industrial of teams. Pep has turned potential world class players into laborers, whose primary function is to “recycle, recycle, recycle” until we bore the opposition into submission.
Teams simply play a 6-4/4-5-1/5-4-1 against us and dare us to break them down by finding the space in a collapsed formation camped on the edge of its own penalty area.
Even against that kind of rearguard action, we have become boring, merely shuttling the ball from side to side, rather than sending it intently danger areas looking for a touch, a second ball, or a deflection…something to create anxiety at the back!
Instead, we simply allow defenders to shuffle 5 yards right or 5 yards left to blunt what passes for an attack.
Compounding this, we have two strikers who love nothing more than chasing the ball in behind, which never comes, and they get frustrated.
We have world class midfielders who are taught to stifle the instincts and abilities that created their reputations and, instead, make safe 5 yards passes.
All 3 goals were brilliant, but at 3:45 one of the best team goals of the last decade is on display.
Where did THIS City go???
Absolute class and some of the best football anyone has ever seen coming from the Boys in Blue under Pep!