Manuel Pellegrini (cont)

[Love Bites and Everything]

Not the boss's fault today, Kompany and terrible marking for the second cost us, sloppy goals are now becoming the norm, needs addressing asap

Surely is sloppy goals are becoming the norm then the manager needs to accept some responsibility for that?

 

[bondsman]

Pellegrini remains tactically hopeless IMO. Can't change a game when he needs to. We defend as a team very poorly and his over reliance on Lampard to change things is getting embarrassing. I agree with a few others on here though that the spaniards responsible for our recruitment need looking at. Who was the last truly great player we bought who improved our squad in an area we were lacking? I like bony but not sure we need him. We do however need pace and a replacement for yaya an IMO a player like dejong who wins a tackle. Fernando is no better than Garcia. And ferdandinho is not the same player since the World Cup.

 

[Damanino]

Wonder what game is gonna be like against Boro, so far in Fa Cup under Pellegrini we mostly struggled and he was lucky as he is yet to face a PL team we only had to play mostly at home also only vs Championship teams.

Watford, Blackburn, Wigan, Wednesday.

Against Watford we were 2-0 down, then Blackburn made us play a replay, than that Wigan loss at home ffs.
Wednesday wasnt very far from a won at the Etihad too and probably unlucky not to reach a replay.

And we usually played strong teams, so no way we fielded 5-6 youngster and B team players, we had strong line ups yet it was mostly struggling.

Boro coach Karanka is best friend and former assistant at Real of Mourinho, they sure talking about what they should do to upset City in the Cup. Given Our performances in FA Cup there isnt a reason why a good form Boro couldnt create a very hard game for us even if their level is so much below ours.

In terms of youth players getting playing time, well we probably wont risk them at all maybe Boro too big an opponent for that. I mean Wednesday was so Boro is better than them...

Its really a must win game but then Chelsea game is gonna be huge with their 10/10 record at home in PL so far, they are surely looking for their next win making the gap 8 points.
Pellegrini must prepare the team for that lot better than he did for the Arsenal game. And Chelsea is no Arsenal.

 

[Marvin]

I'm recognising some of the same old posters who come out of the woodwork to slag off key players or the manager every time we get a bad result.

Pellegrini got his selection wrong but how many times has that happened?

 

[sh249]

I'm a big Pellegrini fan, but thought he got a lot wrong yesterday - both in terms of team selection and substitutions

 

[Jung the foreman]

I'm recognising some of the same old posters who come out of the woodwork to slag off key players or the manager every time we get a bad result.

Pellegrini got his selection wrong but how many times has that happened?

Didn't see anyone slagging off team selection before the game.

 

[Rammy Blue]

Pellegrini got his selection wrong but how many times has that happened?

Thought his selection was pretty predictable tbh, not often you can guess the starting 11 but he didn't have too many options.

Hindsight being a wonderful thing, we'd have probably been better starting with Jovetic to help out Sergio and could have also had a shout for not starting Vince as he looked all over the place to me, which seemed to affect Demechelis who looked nervous as fuck.

 

[supercity88]

When things are going well - what a squad we have. When things aren't going well - poor player recruitment. I totally agree that Fernando has not made the impact I had hoped or expected. He hasn't improved us in the midfield the way Matic did with Chelsea. We don't look any better or more solid defensively with him in the side than we did last season, yet he can't control the game or provide attacking impetus as you would get with the Fernandinho, Yaya combination.

The midfield remains a worry because Lampard is not at an age where he can play that role for 90 minutes. He's much better being used in the no.10 role and allowed more freedom. He played it very well against Bayern at home. The side Pellegrini picked looked good. Arsenal’s seemed attacking and I thought we got it right. But we were awful and sometimes that happens. Now the whole squad need a kick up the proverbial and to go to Stamford Bridge and win. It will be a feisty game and we know we have to win there really to put the pressure on. There’s not much we can do in terms of personnel considering injuries and the ACON but we need to get stuck into them and really play with passion. Beat them and we can win the league – they’ve got lots of games to contend with and we will have Yaya and Bony back in Feb to seriously enhance our squad and kick on. Stay within 4pts of Chelsea when they return and I think we can do it

 

[VOOMER]

Arguably a career define two weeks for Manuel because the Boro' game is must win and the Chelsea game is must not lose.

Lose both of them and the Barca game becomes our season defining game.

I just hope Pellegrini can get the boys focused for Boro because no doubt they will be wanting to just get the Chelsea game out of the way, but Boro' are going to be a real tough contender next Saturday.

Lose to Chelsea and its game over for me, I can't see Chelsra dropping another 8 point lead with Mourinho in charge, plus we still have to go away to Liverpool, United and Spurs.

If we end the season 10 points adrift and there is disunity in our squad then it is definitely goodbye Manuel.

He's history unless we the league, or CL, the main concern should really be the two above him. Someone said Soriano is responsible for us balancing the books. Well aside from the FFP fiasco most deals were done by Glick and Khaldoon. As for transfers, Song was missed on a free, Bony was only £19mill rather than the basic of £25mill now. So rather Fernando we could have gone for Song bought Bony earlier, or better still bought Sanchez. They are being paid large wages and have the manager as a buffer, certainly in Tixxi' s case, to deflect blame. We looked to a 37 year old free transfer to change the game, coupled with his hit and miss success rate at Barcelona, it's safe to say Tixxi has survived on who he knows, rather than who he's found.

 

[BillyShears]

Arguably a career define two weeks for Manuel because the Boro' game is must win and the Chelsea game is must not lose.

We've been here before. This is no more career defining than any other moment from this season. We could lose to Chelsea by five goals and we still wouldn't be out of the title race. An 8 point deficit is something which can be turned around in a couple of weeks as we saw recently. I also think the way in which Pellegrini has handled our previous "blip" ensures that he will be going nowhere this summer and any talk to the contrary is just wishful thinking or blind stupidity.

Having said all that, I think he made two big mistakes yesterday. One he could do nothing about - that was selecting Milner who was garbage. The other and the one he could've done something about, was throwing Vinny in with MD. That a mistake. He should've played Mangala no matter what to deal with Arsenal's pace. The fact it was Vinny and MD meant we weren't aggressive enough at the back and when we aren't aggressive from the back we struggle to build coherency in our play (which was apparent yesterday).

Our midfield is a huge concern for me. I've been saying for a few weeks we're short a quality midfield player/passer of the ball. Basically with Toure out our options are Nando/Dinho plus a 36 year old Lampard. That isn't a midfield that will win you the PL let alone the CL. We need to address that this summer as a priority. I'd have done it in Jan over a striker but I can see why they've gone for the striker with the injuries we have had up front.