Or something like thast as Mr Wolf once said
I sat in the 3rd tier tonight, as opposed to just a few rows up off the ground, so I could see things much clearer than usual. And I have to say that what I saw was not the most pleasing of things I've ever seen. The 4-4-2 formation is strangling us. We are not getting the best out of our players with this formation and we are relying on individual bits of excellence to try and score us goals and win us games. The constant long balls to Ade and lack of ideas is soul destroying considering the amount of talent we have on the pitch. We were up against a very weak Arsenal squad who, let's face it, anything less than a win would have been a disappointment. Now I don't wanna take anything away from the players because individually once again they all played very well, but as a team we are just not playing to the best of our abailities
We're all too keen to just hoof it up to Ade and try to pick up the pieces, and considering the team we've got and what we're capable of this just isn't good enough and we're gonna come up short against any team that is anywhere near the same standard as us. Grinding out results and huff and puff just doesn't do this team justice. The only way we were ever gonna score was through individual bits of skill as opposed to quality team football and luckily tonight we were playing a team so weak that Tevez, SWP and Bellamy could carve out goals all by themselves out of nothing. This won't be the case evry week and it's been like this for too long now, hence 7 draws some of which were against far inferior teams.
Bringing Vinnie on for Tevez (who was right to be subbed) and switching from 4-4-2 to 4-1-4-1 was an other negative move although this will be overlooked (possibly rightly so) considering the result and the fact we saw out the game, but negative tactics designed to contain the other team and not designed to get the best out of ours are becoming all to frequent.
Now I haven't got anything against Hughes and I want the guy to do well, the way he punched towards our fans when they were singing 'Hughesy Hughesy give us a wave' showed how much he wants to succeed at City, but I just can't see it happening with the way we're going and we are gonna have to have a much more intelligent set up against the rags and in future league games if we want to progress much further
Kudos to SWP, Tevez and Lescott in particular for superb individual performances.
Ecstatic to get to the semi's, but not looking forward to playing the rags
