Posted in the Pep thread, but seems apropos for here.
Lest anyone forget, while I live in Chicago now, I grew up watching City in the 60s and spent my summers in Rusholme, two streets from the ground, watching the lads train. I turn 61 this weekend and thus have lived through both the 44 years and the subsequent glory years we’ve been enjoying.
This is, therefore, not a knee jerk reaction, but something I have touched on repeatedly over the last two seasons, as I’ve felt we have been spackling over the cracks by scraping wins.
No more, it appears, and those cracks are starting to look and feel like fissures.
To wit….
I think most people thought Rodri being out for the year was going to make this season a bridge too far, but NO-ONE could foresee that City would be breaking NEGATIVE stats this season instead of positive ones.
Yes, we have a very large group of injuries, and a team with some walking wounded being forced to play, but some of that HAS TO be laid at Pep’s feet.
Every week, we see teams blooding youngsters and players making debuts. Sadly, Pep trusts his old, slow and walking wounded over the young players who have been training with the squad all season. If not now, when?
And, maybe it sounds stupid, but when you desperately need to keep a clean sheet, away, in the Champions League, why is it the HOME team can play a back 4/5, but we persist with a back 3 that leaks like a sieve and is susceptible to both the fast counter and a cross into the box?
One clear reason: NO-ONE we play in midfield has the ability to play as a box to box midfielder for 90 minutes. No-one. Not a single player on the field. So, we have to try to play the “overload game,” where we keep and move the ball SLOWLY into the opposition half, pin them back, and then allow us to try to CREATE an overload by shifting the ball around to the open man. Sadly, even the bottom third of the teams in the Premier League, let alone the best managers in the world of European football, have learned OVER THE LAST 5 YEARS how to blunt this approach, then spring into attack and stuff us with the same old “one shot, one goal” that is as common today as LEE ONE PEN was in the 70s!!!
Pep is a football genius.
Or, maybe Pep WAS a football genius and it has taken the coaching disciples a decade to learn his methods, mark out their training grounds with his rectangles, and learn his systems…all while developing their own bigger, stronger, faster players to both blunt his plans and exploit his way of playing?
I have said for a few seasons now that football was leaving this slow, aging squad behind and that the “Three S’s” were the future of football…Size, Speed and Strength!
Yes, of course, technical ability is a requirement, but at the apex of the game, this is a given. However, as age takes over, the speed of the game robs you of your technique, because you simply cannot play that fast, don’t have the strength to hold off younger, stronger players, and then lack the size, speed or strength to retrieve the ball.
I think, in Nunes, Txiki saw the Three S’s and believed he could be a good addition to the midfield, but Pep doesn’t trust him to hold onto the ball, won’t take the leash off him to run at teams, and thus has blunted the advantages he MIGHT be able to bring to the team…just like Jack, Phil, Savinho and Doku on the wings!
We love to have wingers who hug the touchline, but we don’t have the speed in getting forward to help them be one on one or be able to play the ball inside the full back and set them away!
Son at Spurs has made a career out of setting up wide and being played in, but he would be another Jack Grealish in this team set up…just like Cole Palmer would be driving sideways, not forward into the box if he were still here.
My fear is that Pep honestly believes it is a simple matter of getting his injured players back, his half-fit players fit, and getting back to where we were at the start of the season after Christmas. If so, he is deluded.
Sadly, I don’t believe it is just age, pace, size and nagging injuries that have doomed this season, I believe it is THE LACK OF ANY TACTICAL PROGRESS AND THE REPETITION OF ONCE REVOLUTIONARY, BUT NOW MERELY STALE, IDEAS coming from the coaching staff.
We lack dynamism.
We lack speed.
We lack strength.
We lack size in the middle of the park.
We lack a second goal scorer.
We lack a safe pair of hands.
We lack an on field leader.
We lack any Plan B when Plan A hadn’t worked for 75 minutes…although I actually think Pep thinks a few subs and shuffling half the team into a different position IS a Plan B!
This season, 2024/25, is a season too far for this team. I don’t know if 115 concerns has stopped us doing the business that has been needed. Maybe the club has been amassing FFP funds for the rebuild they THOUGHT could wait until 2025 IF/AFTER Pep signed a new deal? Or, maybe there is some other, unknown, internal, executive reason why we have been hoarding FFP monies, such as wanting the wage bill clipped when older stars on millions per month move on?
Whatever the reason City have not consistently and systematically introduced players who are ready-made replacements and younger, high quality potential improvements, has been the ONLY MAJOR MISTAKE OF THIS EXECUTIVE TEAM SINCE THEY ARRIVED…unless they have actually been flying too close to the sun and they know (even though they refuse to admit it) that we are about to be schwacked and will need every penny and more to build their way back out of the mess they have created?
Whatever the reason we find ourselves here, THEY are the only ones that can fix it, be it by coaching, a coaching change or the injection of personnel that will turn the ship around.
The complete lack of midfield strengthening, while ignoring the blooding of internal, Academy talent, has IMHO been down to Pep’s stubbornness and nothing more.
Wright, O’Reilly, Simpson-Pusey (and THB before him), Bobb and McAtee have been given a little lip service and a seat on the bench for the season (which means they aren’t playing hardly any games anywhere for any team) and have thus gained almost ZERO FIRST TEAM EXPERIENCE. What’s the point? Where will our Conor Bradley come from?
This weekend’s derby looms very, very large indeed.
Amorim is the big new thing. His team is faster, stronger and hungrier than ours, even with its multiple flaws. And, their position in the table has probably only one direction to go, while we (with the exception of Forest) look to be in free fall now that the rest of the Top 6 have basically caught up and even overtaken us.
If we defend like we are, we are sunk.
If we lack the midfield bite needed for the second ball, we are sunk.
If we miss the opportunities we do create, we are sunk.
And, if, God forbid, we lose big, maybe Pep, too, will be sunk!
It’s all fine and dandy talking about 6 of 7 and more trophies under Prp than in our entire history before him, but time and tide wait for no man and football (and the business of football) is ALL about “What have you done for me lately?”
I’m not sure Pep and at least half of this team want to give an honest answer to that question.
