Manuel Pellegrini (cont)

[zandvoort blue]

What I find baffling is that we were led to believe that Frank Lampard would have a big part to play while Yaya was at the ACON.

 

[mancity1]

Agree with a lot of that, EB. We are having a real problem breaking teams down at the moment, and that's why we are dropping points at home rather than away. You've got to factor in the fact that the way we used to deal with that was with clever interchanges between silva, Nasri, yaya and Aguero. All season we have had to cope without several of those players, whether they were injured, away or half fit. On Saturday we had three of them but Nasri was nowhere near fit, Sergio can't seem to get back firing and it's not happening for silva at the moment because his form has dropped off following a few man-marking jobs when he was the sole playmaker.

Pellegrini's problem on Saturday was that he seemed to lose his usual cool head after that embarrassing first half. But he hasn't become a bad manager overnight, he's become a manager with increasing pressure under a lot of extenuating circumstances. I've still got faith in him, and this bunch of players, to get back into their groove, and finish the season well. And then, title or not, we will have to freshen the squad. I think zab and probably yaya have peaked, overplayed themselves into slow decline for a start.

What is true is that, extenuating circumstances or not, the season could be over in a fortnight. The pressure is on and the windows of opportunity closing. The good news is that bizarrely, the next two games could be right up our street. Tough challenges in big atmospheres, rather than parked buses in front of a flat crowd.

I suppose your right Newcastle at home who have like Stoke at Home and the list goes in the past been 3 point bankers will be another tough ask but only because we are playing like a third division side especially at home at present.

If MP gets out done by the caretaker he is history.

I disagree with your view on the season only by one game , lose at Stoke and its over and then its all hands on deck to stay in the top four for sure.

 

[Marvin]

And so was the withdrawal of silva. It doesn't matter if he's having a poor game, he's the most likely to create a goal against a parked bus.

Silva's been our worst attacking player for some matches now. His influence less and less visible. He has cut an isolated and frustrated figure and hasn't even had his usual work rate. Personally I think that as much as I hear the "he's a match winner" arguments, I fully understood why had to be taken off. Even if it was just a shot across his bows in terms of saying "you need to produce and you haven't for too long now".

Not what I would have done, MA. He still looked our best player first half for me, but was coping with little movement around him and safe, negative passing from the others. I'm ploughing a lonely furrow on this one, and you and I have disagreed many times, but Nasri was doing nothing but play it back to the holding players and centre halfs for me. An off form Silva still has a lot more to offer than that in my opinion.

I'm Silva's biggest fan of course but he's been the lone playmaker for a month or two now, and it's made it easy for the opposition to shut him and therefore us out. That's affected his form. Usually you man mark silva and yaya and Nasri punch a hole in your defence. That's been gone, with a predictable Navas poking cross after cross at the front man. That's why I'm not buying this 'navas should have started' stuff. I wouldn't have picked him.

You've only mentioned the problems going forward. The problem at the moment is that we are conceding silly goals. You give a team a goal start and it is very difficult to break them down.

Look at the ridiculous goals conceded against Hull and Boro. We'd have won those games had we not put ourselves under immense pressure.

And going forward Navas is key. The Navas / Zab partnership is a more or less guaranteed way of opening up a defence. Between them they constantly beat the full back. Navas has created more chances than any other City player so he should start

 

[OB1]

His team selection yesterday was easy to criticise and wasn't what I would have gone with but I can see why he chose it and I can accept his explanation that after successive home defeats where he played wingers, he decided to try something else.

I could sort of get his playing Silva and Nasri as the "wide" midfielders, however to then play Dzeko up top with Sergio was utter fucking nonsense.

That was the team that won us the league last year if you swap Fernando for yaya.

I know I'm repeating myself but I had no problems with the starting eleven. It was the subs which were baffling. How on earth did Nasri stay on the field for 90 mins?

Because he was playing better than Silva.

 

[blueparrot]

And so was the withdrawal of silva. It doesn't matter if he's having a poor game, he's the most likely to create a goal against a parked bus.

Silva's been our worst attacking player for some matches now. His influence less and less visible. He has cut an isolated and frustrated figure and hasn't even had his usual work rate. Personally I think that as much as I hear the "he's a match winner" arguments, I fully understood why had to be taken off. Even if it was just a shot across his bows in terms of saying "you need to produce and you haven't for too long now".

Mentioned it in the Toure thread but it,s worth pointing out here how much opponents fear Yay a and the attention he gets makes it easier for Silva to find pockets of space, I'd be very surprised if his influence didn't return with the return of Toure .

 

[Deleted member 58678]

The main criticism I had of Pellegrini after his first 3 months in charge is that he is not adaptable. He plays the same way, no matter who we are playing. It makes us predictable and easy to figure out for opposition managers. In fairness to him, when we were without a striker in December, he changed the make up of the team, adapted and we played well. Credit to him for that. But really we only changed out of necessity.

Yesterday against Hull, if Yaya was fit, is there any doubt in anyone's mind whatsoever that he would have started? It would probably have been a straight swap for Fernando. As I mentioned earlier, they couldn't really be more different as players. Except for both looking rather lethargic on occasions, Yaya dominates the ball, dictates play, powers through oppositions with his strength and power. Fernando trudges around the centre circle hoping nobody notices he's hiding.

Yet despite these differences in their style of play, Pellegrini will swap them, one for one and expect the same outcome. This is Hull at home, a relegation fighting team. Yaya would have dominated their midfield, we would have took the game to them. Instead we play the apparently defensive minded Fernando. Why? Lampard or Milner are both better on the ball than Fernando, more drive going forwards, better passers, Milner has a higher work rate, Lampard has a great eye for goal. Yet Fernando is picked. Why?

If we were playing Tottenham at home yesterday we'd have picked exactly the same starting line up as we did against Hull. This despite the fact Tottenham are a high pressing, front foot team who play 4 at the back. Hull are a lethargic, relegation threatened team play 3 at the back, which you would assume means we could do with some width and pace to exploit the space down their wings. But Navas, despite coming off the back of his best game for City, is on the bench. Why?

I think the answer to both questions is that Pellegrini doesn't even consider the characteristics of the other team. It's basically an irrelevance to him. He thinks as long as we have "trust" it will all work out in the end. I understand this may have been passed down from above as part of the "hollistic" approach. Well is you are Barcelona 2009-2012 which are probably the best team ever assembled, and you are playing in a league where realistically only two other teams have got any chance of giving you a game, it's fine to be arrogant enough to just stick to what you like and not consider the opposition. But this is the Premier League, the most competitive league in the world. Anyone can beat anyone, as is proven every single week.

You have to take in to account the strengths and weaknesses of other teams, the strengths and weaknesses of your team, and come up with a game plan for every single game in order to win it. Ferguson did this for years. He may have stuck to the same kind of ideals, but if a team had a slow fullback, you can guarantee he's play his quickest winger against him. Pellegrini doesn't look at the game like that.

Navas playing well against Chelsea wasn't by design. It was an accident of being the only right winger available. If Nasri had been fit, Navas probably wouldn't have been played. Navas should have started against Hull to expose the space down their channels. Lampard or Milner should have played instead of Fernando because our midfield should have been on the front foot, not sitting deep and defending against Hull. This is not some kind of specialist tactical insight, it's just common sense!

Whether these decisions are being made by Pellegrini, or above his head, one thing is for sure, with our strongest 11 available, we are good enough to stick to our favoured shape / way of playing and beat anyone in this league. But when that strongest 11 is not available, we have to adapt. We have to analyse our opponents, analyse who we have available, and figure out a game plan of how to win.

Winning is more important than being holistic.

Some astute observations in this comment. It's certainly an interesting philosophical approach if that is the way he approaches a game and develops a game plan.

In this age of modern football analysis, where all sorts of stats are available at the push of a button, I would be astonished if Pellegrini didn't obtain detailed data of the opposition, study the tapes of their games in collaboration with his managerial team, and then pick the team accordingly. I recall a few months ago the EDS squad sitting down in front of banks of computers and Paddy running through data on their performances, both collectively and individually. By studying this sort of data players at all levels can develop insights into their own performances as well as that of the team.

If the holistic approach means that we adopt a particular style irrespective of who we play, then that would clearly be madness. In defence of Pellers there have been quite a few modifications to the 442 which, to be fair, carried us largely to the title last season.

However the problem now is that other teams HAVE studied our style and worked out an approach that will work against us. This has been clearly evident against the lower placed teams. Rather than say 'why is it that Burnley/Hull/Middlesborough' play 'like Real Madrid' against us, the real question is have they worked out tactics to defuse us, and if so what have we then done to adapt our style accordingly?

Because other teams now have more confidence as they have developed a similar game plan, the fear factor of coming to the Etihad expecting to lose has gone. Teams are now believing that they can get a result, and guess what, they are.

Therefore Pellegrini has to change our approach. That's why he is being paid top dollar. I hope between now and the end of the season we do see evidence of this. I think the return of Yaya and the arrival of Bony will go a long way to returning us to some semblance of top form.

Nevertheless in my view is the responsibility of both Txiki and Pellegrini to figure out a way to counter the standard opposition approach against us. We need to be more flexible, more adaptable, and more responsive to the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition team. This means not taking, for example, the approach in the Hull game of playing two defensive midfielders, and playing Ed up front without anyone to cross the ball to him.

I sincerely hope Pellegrini has learnt a very big lesson from that game. I am praying that he picks a team to play Stoke which reflects the strengths of the opposition (for example playing Mangala because of his strength in the air).

We still have the key players who won us the title. The ability is there. The pressure is now firmly on Pellegrini to somehow get them back into form.

Two spot on posts, there.

We aren't good enough to just go and play the same way against all teams. We don't move the ball around the pitch quickly enough, we don't have enough movement around the team when one of our players has the ball, we don't press the ball or cynically foul high up the pitch when we lose the ball but we do play a high defensive line so we are constantly under threat of a counter-attack. Then, too often, when we are counter-attacked, we defend poorly and give too many fouls away close to our box and we don't defend those well.

I've thought it was naïvety or a blasé attitude, I've also thought it could be arrogance, but most of all I think it's a lack of attention to detail. We cannot go and play the same monotonous slow passing game we play with the openness of our defending just because we have better players than the opposition. Slow passing is too easy to defend against and teams have sussed out how to play against our version of slow passing and I reckon every team in this league's eyes are lighting up if they see us coming up in their fixture list at the moment as they should all be fancying their chances of getting a big scalp.

There is also a seeming lack of preparation of his opposition as well as or as part of his lack of attention to detail. His formations and tactics, especially in the games against Moscow and Hull moreover any others, looked like he'd not even bothered to think about what those teams were going to play like and just arrogantly thought "we'll fucking stuff these two, we're a great team"...

 

[Deleted member 58678]

I could sort of get his playing Silva and Nasri as the "wide" midfielders, however to then play Dzeko up top with Sergio was utter fucking nonsense.

That was the team that won us the league last year if you swap Fernando for yaya.

I know I'm repeating myself but I had no problems with the starting eleven. It was the subs which were baffling. How on earth did Nasri stay on the field for 90 mins?

Because he was playing better than Silva.

Only in the way in which he's not bothered about holding onto possession (sometimes too long), cutting back, passing backwards when there's nothing on. Whereas Silva's thoughts are almost always "goal...how can we score a goal here?" and the amount of people just stood still on Saturday is not acceptable to Silva's positive game and it made him look bad. In my opinion, you substitute everyone (including Hart) before considering subbing Silva. Barça do not sub Iniesta when they need a goal, ever.

 

[richards30]

We have lost our fear factor and teams know how to get at us........sit deep, pack themselves 25 yards from goal but counter attack us as we always leave ourselves WIDE open at the back!

 

[Didsbury Dave]

I could sort of get his playing Silva and Nasri as the "wide" midfielders, however to then play Dzeko up top with Sergio was utter fucking nonsense.

That was the team that won us the league last year if you swap Fernando for yaya.

I know I'm repeating myself but I had no problems with the starting eleven. It was the subs which were baffling. How on earth did Nasri stay on the field for 90 mins?

Because he was playing better than Silva.

That's a matter of opinion, OB. I thought Nasri was back to his worst, because he wasn't fit. Sideways passing, slowing things down, taking no risks, laying it back to the centre halfs. I'm not trying to scapegoat him: His wasn't the only poor performance: Zabaleta looked shot. Fernando hopeless again. Sergio not himself. And silva has been ineffective for 3 or 4 games. But to me he's like Sergio, he's always got a goal in him. You never take him off if you need one. And so that's my biggest criticism of the manager at the weekend: leaving a half fit and ineffective Nasri on the pitch and chucking on players out of position, willy nilly.

You can make the argument that Nasri needs the game time I suppose, as does Sergio. But I would have swapped him for Navas at half time and put on lampard for fernando.

Instead I thought that diamond midfield we changed to was wierd. We have never played that formation ever I don't think. The game was too frustrating, too stop start to be making changes like that IMO.

But I'm calmer after a period of reflection. We've made things hard for ourselves but I don't see us falling away. We need to finish this season like lions now, like we turned things around last autumn when the chips were down.

 

[OB1]

The bigger point with regard the footballing thing, is that our difficulties go way beyond Pellegrini not legislating for the opposition's strengths (if indeed that's true at all, when only last week for example he selected Sagna, a stay at home jockeyer, rather than fans favourite Zabaleta, a marauding diver inner, specifically to negate the threat of Hazard).
The club, under the overall stewardship of Txixi and Ferian, is in the process of installing a particular footballing philosophy - largely modelled, rightly or wrongly (and personally I think it's a mistake), on tika taka - throughout the entire club, from the U10's right the way through to the first team, and the problem that both the club and the manager has, is that the squad has been broadly assembled to play that way. Aggressive front foot defenders, full backs providing the width, intricate triangular passing moves to bring those full backs into play etc etc.

Whilst we have been horrendously unlucky with injuries, the squad is (and has been for 2 or 3 years) lacking when it comes to the fundamental attributes needed to adapt our playing style. Navas is the only winger at the club and the only attacking player with any real pace, and even he is horribly one dimensional; a push and chase merchant who lacks any kind of trickery to wrong foot opponents, which he why he so frequently cuts inside or turns and lays the ball backwards. The lack of pace and/or anyone who can dribble is a real handicap for us then in terms of our ability to counterattack, and indeed to drag parked buses out of position. And with regards the latter tactic, which the rags under Taggart used to circumvent by practising endless evil crossing drills at Carrington, we have no-one, bar Kolarov, whose presence weakens the team overall anyway, who can put in anything other than floaty inaccurate crap from the flanks; manna from heaven for the clod hopper centre halves at Burnley, Hull and Stoke.

Whilst Pellegrini's team selection on Saturday was inexcusable in both the inclusion of Dzeko and the expectation that Fernando, an out and out spoiler, should be considered capable of acting as a de facto attacking conduit, the team that played most of the 2nd half was the one that most of us would probably have picked from the off (given who was available), and yet whilst it looked more mobile and lively overall, it yielded barely any more goal scoring chances than the woefully unbalanced set of plodders did in the first half.

People keep seeming surprised that we can go to places like Chelsea and do well, and yet come unstuck against the lesser teams. The simple reason is that those lesser teams make it fantastically difficult for us, to the point that anyone and everyone below about 5th place parks a fleet of buses whenever they play us, and indeed the teams currently lying 1st, 3rd and 6th have all come to the Etihad this season and done it to us as well. We are uniquely ill equipped to circumvent this tactic for the reasons described, and whilst Pellegrini should rightly take criticism for some truly inexplicable team selections this season, I genuinely don't think that any other manager out there would fare significantly better with the players we currently have at our disposal. Whether that's Pellegrini's fault, or that of those above him doing the buying and imposing the philosophy, is harder to call IMO

Now that actually is a good post, from someone who genuinely knows what they are talking about; must be those coaching badges. However, I am not here to blow smoke up your hiney: I don't smoke and I'd need the kind of edifice that would excite Fred Dibnah to produce the required volume.

I do not entirely agree about tiki taka but I do think it needs a modification for use in this country. The aspects of keeping the ball, pass and move at pace and with intricacy are things that I believe in and are a good way to bring up players. I am also very much into the idea of dominating possession, both by having high pass completion but also by pressing aggressively when the ball is lost. One of our problems is that we have not achieved the levels of pressing I would like to see and that may mean that we take less risks in the attacking third. If we had greater confidence that we would win the ball back quickly, we might be prepared to try more of the difficult balls. We would also be helped in that regard - pressing - if we had more pace in the team and you have beaten me into complete submission on the point of having more pace in the team. That said, I still think we could make up for some of that lack of pace by moving the ball more quickly, which brings us back to the value of drilling players in txiki { ;-) } taka.

I do think we need to give ourselves the option of using real wingers, who have both pace and dribbling ability plus the aptitude to whip in those wicked flat crosses that you obsess over - part of looking beyond tiki taka. In the short-term, maybe there will be occasions where we use Kolarov as left winger and Navas / Milner on the right to fire balls in for Bony to attack but would Manuel go for that?

The other point I would dispute with you and others is the idea that Fernando was meant to be the attacking conduit in central midfield because he is the obvious guy to drop out when Yaya returns. Dinho was surely the guy expected to take that role? He did after all score 53 goals in 284 games for Shakhtar; hardly the stats of an out and out defensive midfielder. I barely saw him play for Shakhtar but I am sure those that did claimed he was more than just a DM there.