Kiev post match reaction thread - PLEASE keep it in here.

[Anonymous]

Pretty shocked at the number of people still clinging to the same old excuses. This is Mark Hughes all over again. No shape, no style, no soul, no substance. We've simply replaced one set of glaring problems for another set of glaring problems...

On to the game - we were shit. I've read a couple of 'we played okay' type posts - were you people watching the same match as me? Our best spells in the match came when we knocked the ball from side to side in our own half really slowly. Our worst spells in the match came whenever we ventured into Kyiv's half. Some random thoughts for you:

Dzeko is getting worse in front of our eyes. Not better. That's got to be a big big big worry. Nearly 30 million euros and the fella looks absolutely lost whenever he plays. Probably because he's constantly having to play as a defacto left forward which may have worked in Germany, but in the Premiership and against decent teams like Kyiv it just isolates him too much and the match passes him by.

The halftime Balo show...here's a thought for our coaching staff. Maybe rather than leaving the players to sort out their own half time team talk whilst they twiddle their thumbs back on the bench, they should stay and talk to the fucking players during the break. If they'd done that, they'd have known there was a problem with Balo and we wouldn't have had the ignominy of seeing Mancini and fucking Platt and fucking Kidd all looking confused and befuddled. Amateur hour at the Apollo is what that was. A disgrace in my book and I bet Khaldoun, Cook, and the powers that be weren't laughing about it...

So people keep saying we have no plan B - go on then, indulge me. What's plan A? Actually, don't bother...I know what plan A is - unfortunately plan A got sussed about four months ago. So forget plan B - we need a new plan A. One which doesn't hinge on having two world class creative full backs...

The return leg next week - don't care if we see Gillingham'esque heroics to be honest. The yoyo nature of our performances, the lost, rabbit in headlights, resigned, KK at Oldham, nature of Mancini's body language coupled with his unintelligible post match interview said it all for me. The man is out of his depth at MCFC...just as Mark Hughes was.

One of your finer moments, if I may be so bold...

I take no pleasure in it Soulboy. I'm gutted at how this team has slowly regressed since the heady days of our beating Liverpool at the beginning of the season. In many respects fuck all can be done right now other than us hoping the players/management sort their necks out and make finishing 4th the priority. The FA Cup is going to be another waste of time as we won't be beating the rags or Arsenal and as our erstwhile manager keeps telling us - too many games, players too tired, blah blah fucking blah. So, we should let Reading roll us on Sunday, and focus on the only thing that will matter come the end of this season...

 

[Rammy Blue]

I take no pleasure in it Soulboy. I'm gutted at how this team has slowly regressed since the heady days of our beating Liverpool at the beginning of the season. In many respects fuck all can be done right now other than us hoping the players/management sort their necks out and make finishing 4th the priority. The FA Cup is going to be another waste of time as we won't be beating the rags or Arsenal and as our erstwhile manager keeps telling us - too many games, players too tired, blah blah fucking blah. So, we should let Reading roll us on Sunday, and focus on the only thing that will matter come the end of this season...

Come off it mate, I understand your frustration but don't be saying that a Wembley trip is of no interest.

 

[gio's side step]

One of your finer moments, if I may be so bold...

I take no pleasure in it Soulboy. I'm gutted at how this team has slowly regressed since the heady days of our beating Liverpool at the beginning of the season. In many respects fuck all can be done right now other than us hoping the players/management sort their necks out and make finishing 4th the priority. The FA Cup is going to be another waste of time as we won't be beating the rags or Arsenal and as our erstwhile manager keeps telling us - too many games, players too tired, blah blah fucking blah. So, we should let Reading roll us on Sunday, and focus on the only thing that will matter come the end of this season...

Billy, we are becoming less of a 'team' week by week.

 

[Anonymous]

I take no pleasure in it Soulboy. I'm gutted at how this team has slowly regressed since the heady days of our beating Liverpool at the beginning of the season. In many respects fuck all can be done right now other than us hoping the players/management sort their necks out and make finishing 4th the priority. The FA Cup is going to be another waste of time as we won't be beating the rags or Arsenal and as our erstwhile manager keeps telling us - too many games, players too tired, blah blah fucking blah. So, we should let Reading roll us on Sunday, and focus on the only thing that will matter come the end of this season...

Come off it mate, I understand your frustration but don't be saying that a Wembley trip is of no interest.

I realize that there's an element of frustration to what I'm saying, but there's also an element of truth in it. Losing to Spurs/Chelsea and putting CL qualification in jeopardy would be catastrophic for this club...we don't look like a team who can handle playing in the FA cup and having the Liverpool/Chelsea/Spurs cup finals in the league.

 

[Rammy Blue]

Come off it mate, I understand your frustration but don't be saying that a Wembley trip is of no interest.

I realize that there's an element of frustration to what I'm saying, but there's also an element of truth in it. Losing to Spurs/Chelsea and putting CL qualification in jeopardy would be catastrophic for this club...we don't look like a team who can handle playing in the FA cup and having the Liverpool/Chelsea/Spurs cup finals in the league.

Obviously I never want City to lose however, as I joked in an earlier post, to progress in the Europa is far too many games with what we have at stake.

To get to the FA Cup final is 2 games, to get to the Europa final is a further 5 games - we just can't deal with that amount of games with the problems that we have on the field.

Win on Sunday, put up a spirited fight next Thursday but go out and I won't be too upset.

 

[ST Coleridge]

I take no pleasure in it Soulboy. I'm gutted at how this team has slowly regressed since the heady days of our beating Liverpool at the beginning of the season. In many respects fuck all can be done right now other than us hoping the players/management sort their necks out and make finishing 4th the priority. The FA Cup is going to be another waste of time as we won't be beating the rags or Arsenal and as our erstwhile manager keeps telling us - too many games, players too tired, blah blah fucking blah. So, we should let Reading roll us on Sunday, and focus on the only thing that will matter come the end of this season...

Come off it mate, I understand your frustration but don't be saying that a Wembley trip is of no interest.

Pay no heed Rammy, the lad's a bit of a drama queen ;)

This is what some of us are talking about when we refer to overly-high expectations. Arsenal and Roma have both been beaten in the Ukraine this season (Arsenal in the autumn, too), you can't expect us to win every match. Nobody wins every match.

We had as many shots as Kiev, despite being the away team. We had 6 corners to their 2. They defended deep in two lines, and countered in numbers. The shape was fine - we had width, with Richards and Kolarov camped in their half, we had solidity in the middle and three threats up front. Unfortunately, the passing/retention of Dzeko and Balotelli wasn't up to it, this was the main problem.
Don't talk about a lack of motivation - we threw the kitchen sink at them in the last twenty minutes.

 

[Soulboy]

We have three players currently unavailable (Milner, Adam Johnson and Kolo Toure)... yet we're seemingly down to the bare bones of the squad!

With the resources we have we should be able to cope with half a dozen players missing rather than it being just a couple of squad players.

Had the manager not had "personal" problems with various players we could have had a much stronger squad to call upon.

This is all self inflicted...

 

[Anonymous]

Obviously I never want City to lose however, as I joked in an earlier post, to progress in the Europa is far too many games with what we have at stake.

To get to the FA Cup final is 2 games, to get to the Europa final is a further 5 games - we just can't deal with that amount of games with the problems that we have on the field.

Win on Sunday, put up a spirited fight next Thursday but go out and I won't be too upset.

You do realize that the FA Cup Semi Final weekend is the weekend we are supposed to play Spurs in the league. Bad bad bad feeling mate...

 

[Zmajuga]

I'll would like to say a few things.

First - There is no weak opponent in football. Every time we underestimated our opponent, we were beaten.

Second - As someone said, our game is figured out by our opponents. Mancini needs to do something about it ASAP. He is a tactician, not us.

Third - I personally think that it is time to fine players for poor performances on the pitch. If management doesn't do that then it's clear that players have been instructed to conserve stamina for FA Cup and league games and that we have no intentions on winning EL.

Fourth - Stop acting like a Real Madrid fans. We are not predestined to win every game. Every team has it's ups and downs. Keep supporting, not slagging and moaning.

Fifth - Cheers! :)



Even when we lose, my heart is with blues....

 

[Failsworth_Blue]

Pretty shocked at the number of people still clinging to the same old excuses. This is Mark Hughes all over again. No shape, no style, no soul, no substance. We've simply replaced one set of glaring problems for another set of glaring problems...

On to the game - we were shit. I've read a couple of 'we played okay' type posts - were you people watching the same match as me? Our best spells in the match came when we knocked the ball from side to side in our own half really slowly. Our worst spells in the match came whenever we ventured into Kyiv's half. Some random thoughts for you:

Dzeko is getting worse in front of our eyes. Not better. That's got to be a big big big worry. Nearly 30 million euros and the fella looks absolutely lost whenever he plays. Probably because he's constantly having to play as a defacto left forward which may have worked in Germany, but in the Premiership and against decent teams like Kyiv it just isolates him too much and the match passes him by.

The halftime Balo show...here's a thought for our coaching staff. Maybe rather than leaving the players to sort out their own half time team talk whilst they twiddle their thumbs back on the bench, they should stay and talk to the fucking players during the break. If they'd done that, they'd have known there was a problem with Balo and we wouldn't have had the ignominy of seeing Mancini and fucking Platt and fucking Kidd all looking confused and befuddled. Amateur hour at the Apollo is what that was. A disgrace in my book and I bet Khaldoun, Cook, and the powers that be weren't laughing about it...

So people keep saying we have no plan B - go on then, indulge me. What's plan A? Actually, don't bother...I know what plan A is - unfortunately plan A got sussed about four months ago. So forget plan B - we need a new plan A. One which doesn't hinge on having two world class creative full backs...

The return leg next week - don't care if we see Gillingham'esque heroics to be honest. The yoyo nature of our performances, the lost, rabbit in headlights, resigned, KK at Oldham, nature of Mancini's body language coupled with his unintelligible post match interview said it all for me. The man is out of his depth at MCFC...just as Mark Hughes was.

I'm not going to kid myself that everythings great at the moment as it clearly isn't but i don't buy into the he's out of his depth at MCFC line. Last night we started pretty well in terms of keeping the ball but then became extremely sloppy once Kiev scored, the break came at a good time and second half i thought we improved in terms of keeping posession but ultimately there wasn't enough good play in the final 3rd

It was a poor performance away at Kiev, it happens, thats football for you thankfully we've got a second leg to try and turn it around but it won't be easy

I appreciate that people don't see us improving and thats the worrying aspect with regards to the recent run of form but we are still in with a shout in this tie, have a great chance of progressing to the semis of the FA cup and are in pole position to finish at least 4th. Theres problems in terms of how we are playing at present but the same can be said of every team in the premiership so it's not just us who have struggled since the turn of the year, United have, Spurs have, Chelsea have. Why? Who knows, is that down to managers being out of their depth? I'm not so sure

What i do know, is that our results need to improve if we are to finish in the top four and have a chance of winning a trophy. Last night wasn't good enough, no doubt about it, but it was just one game. We have a chance on Sunday to get to the FA Cup semi final are currently 5 points ahead of 5th place Spurs who have a game in hand at home to Arsenal with around 1/4 of the season left. Now is not the time to say whether Mancini is out of his depth, come the end of the season will be a better place to judge