Friendlies - what have we found out?

[Le Havre Oswald]

that the in/post match threads are full of rags pretending to be city fans.

your fooling know one wankers.

 

[Stoned Rose]

A little different from Mancini's, shall we say?

In what way?

We have found out absolutley nothing beacuse we are playing friendlies.

As equally daft as it was for people to be lauding Pellegrini and the look of the team in a few friendlies out in the Far east it would be equally similar to criticise any aspect of the team or tactics now.

The team and Pellegrini will be judged, and rightly so, over the course of the season.

As for it will take one season, we are a work in progress is a load of rubbish, we have the team and the squad to be competing immediately and quite rightly Pellegrini accepts this.

We have found out absolutley nothing

Some of us have.<br /><br />-- Sat Aug 10, 2013 10:00 pm --<br /><br />

that we are conceding a lot of goals with balls played over the top of our defence and the defenders are caught very flat footed

We are playing a higher line.

 

[Damanino]

What have we found out?

That our defence will have lot more problems this season. Unless we press really well now it will be easier to run trough us and as our defenders' position is higher their pace and positional skills will be more important. Well most of the decent strikers are faster than Kompany and Lescott in PL. Or every team has at least one faster striker than them.

This higher defense line is something Pellegrini prefers and he did it in his previous teams, so he wont really change back from it.

AVB still didnt figure it out how to fine tune his similar defensive tactics in the PL, it clearly is not working just as in La Liga (or Portugal League).

Pressing also seems something we are getting used really hard, of course it makes the players really tired, you need extreme condition to keep press the opponent every time you lose the ball. No reason to do it if 2-3 players forgets to press...

It really can take a year to get used to it perfecty.

Converting chances hopefully will improve but apart from the Milan match when we faced Milan C team, we couldnt score more than 1 goal in a match.

We still have one work to work on different things (of course half of the squad will travel to and from the international friendly matches).

Newcastle shouldnt be a problem for Pellegrini, since they promoted we always could win against them if I am right.

 

[stuncity]

From what I've seen can't see that much difference between the 2 systems other than the personnel. Fernandino will quickly have to learn that Yaya cannot do the tracking back job that we need to protect the back four. What we will find is a bigger space between midfield and defence when countered against. The build up was too slow again today and can't see Negredo and Dzeko ever being a combo that will work unless chasing a game in last 10 minutes.

 

[LoveCity]

High line seems risky in the pacy Premier League, AVB's Chelsea got picked apart playing it, but it CAN work if done right because you smother teams and they find it hard to get out of their own half. Just not sure we look close to getting it right and defending deeper like against Bayern still seems to suit us best (of course, we were under constant pressure in that game but look at how well we coped).

 

[Mr Ed (The Stables)]

"High line seems risky in the pacy Premier League"

Agreed playing a high line against Cardiff City away for example, which is our second game, with Bellamy will be very risky indeed.

But there again surely we have far better players who can impose themselves on say Cardiff, than they can impose on us.

 

[BlueAnorak]

What have we found out?

[1] We are playing a high line and are getting flayed for it. Our DM's have to close down the opposition quickly or dangerous balls will be threaded behind our back line.
[2] The team is unbalanced with most attacks going down the right wing.
[3] Where is the much vaunted pressing? I haven't seen much of it.
[4] YaYa is still lazy.
[5] Although he looks a tidy player, Negredo's chances to goals ratio is very average (at around 1 in 6).
[6] Our build up play is still far too slow.

 

[super_city_si]

I hope its not too detrimental to Aguero that he hasnt featured at all. We need this guy back to his 2011/2012 best if were to push for the league.

 

[tiggsywiggsywoo]

Pellegrini is trying different systems hes a smart cookie. The Bayern game was an indication of this. Plus he doesn't want to give too much away to rival opposition pre season. All will be well, on the day.

 

[The Pink Panther]

We have found out that tinkering with a defense that has had the best league record in the past few seasons isn't a good idea.....don't mend something that isn't broken......concentrate on the parts that do need improving

The problem is Barry was largely involved in those defensive records over the last few seasons. Him basically being ostracized from the first team squad now is a worry.

Who is going to do the Barry role? Yaya, Ferdaninio, Garcia, Milner, Rodwell not one of them will protect our back four and more importantly our left back like Barry imo!!

This defensive high line will almost certainly make us ship more goals, but on the flip side we might score more. I'll let Pelligrini sort it out but by playing it scoring3 goals might not be enough to win a match.

So we've employed the Chilean Mark Hughes