City were trash. Thats the end of it. We are the worlds best at keeping possession but at the end we invite as much pressure as possible by letting real have the ball and completely shit up our defenders in the most important match of their lives
Not at all. By far the better team over the two legs.
I hate when teams play shit for ninety minutes, grab two goals with a bit of luck at the end and then everyone calls them amazing.
City's philosophy is to dominate possession, have more shots and create more chances. Nine times out of ten that's enough, but sometimes freak results happen and you can bet last night was a freak result. Scoring their first two shots on target? No, that doesn't make them good and it doesn't make us bad.
I don't blame the squad or Pep for this one at all. The board have been playing a game of "let's see how much Pep can scrape together while we wait for a cheap striker to magically appear" and the team have basically done the best they can with this massive self-inflicted disadvantage hanging over them. Before then it was playing without a left-back. God knows why with the money we have but this board are allergic to having a player for all eleven positions at the same time. The only reason we've won so much in these years is that Pep's a wizard who can make Zinchenko and Delph look like great left-backs instead of decent midfielders, and can get a striker's haul of goals out of Gundogan or a series of wingers who clearly have no idea how to play false nine but are doing what they can because they've been left no choice by the board's indecisiveness and frugality.
By not signing a striker, the board sent a clear message that this season was "just do your best with what you have" rather than "we're going to try to win everything". Any other manager would have us languishing in the battle for third place- we might actually win the league with nobody getting above eleven goals. That's ridiculous considering the last ten champions before last season had these top scorers:
Liverpool- Salah (19) and Mané (18)
City- Agüero (21) and Sterling (17)
City- Agüero (21) and Sterling (18)
Chelsea- Costa (20) and Hazard (16)
Leicester- Vardy (24) and Mahrez (17)
Chelsea- Costa (20) and Hazard (14)
City- Touré (20), Agüero (17) and Dzeko (16)
United- Van Persie (26)
City- Agüero (23) and Dzeko (14)
United- Berbatov (20) and Hernandez (13)
Generally the champion has someone with at least 20 goals and someone else around the 14-17 mark. That just goes to show how crucial having an elite goalscorer or two up front is. Our title win last season was
in spite of having no goalscorer, and let's not kid ourselves, Liverpool having an injury-hit season let our board off the hook big time.