Manuel Pellegrini (cont)

[J_Bow]

There's been so much wrong with our performances, we got lucky in December. It's all so obvious everyone is repeating themselves..

- Slow build up play, too many touches on the ball
- Trying to force play through the middle while opponents have 8 or 9 men compact in and around their box
- Starting games slow because of the above points, fail to score and we start getting panicky and desperate thus leading to mistakes
- Midfield being caught out too often not protecting the defence enough
- Defenders being too high up and making aggressive/rash decisions 15, 20 yards out of position (Kompany, Zab)
- Shit corners, a miracle if we clear the first man
- Strikers aren't putting goals away, collectively haven't played a lot of games

Now I don't know if it's a change in style of play but we played much, much quicker last year and you were lucky to see players take more than 3 touches on the ball apart. We were deadly on the counter and much. much more clinical last season.

Massive regression this year.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

A very very good post mate, of course Tolmie is right about the goals but its the bloody system that makes all of our defenders as you say make last ditch stupid tackles on a regular basis.

Too many of these 'last ditch' as you put it tackles, are not last ditch though, they are taking place close to the half way line.

I understand the thinking behind them, ie getting us back on the attack quickly, the very thing many of us want us to do, but we're not winning them, so that is an issue, and we end up conceding daft goals as a result. If being 'pragmatic' means cutting these out then I'm all for it. Our CB's in particular should not be making 'last ditch' tackles on the half way line, they are better, more intelligent footballers than that, same goes for CM players not winning similar tackles and putting the CB's under unnecessary pressure.

Remind me the last time you can recall one of our midfielders making a tackle to actually win back possession, rather than a loose ball from the opposition or Fernandinho anticipating a cut-out?

We have zero bite across the middle of the pitch.

Horses for courses.

Clichy becomes a top grade full-back when he defends on the front foot and attempts to nip in and tackle. He also has the luxury of having the pace to get back and have another bite if there is still 30 yards in behind him.

Zabba is a liability with regards yellow cards attempting to do the same.

Kompany has always tried to anticipate and challenge high up the field, even under Mancini (sending off against United) He's simply not quick enough now to get away with it and has to tailor his game like a proper Italian great in the next few years.

Ironically, Mangala is actually perfect for the front foot thinking (when his maturity allows him not to panic and foul)

So the question is that the system might not be so flawed, more an acceptance from the manager that some of his personnel are?

 

[OB1]

Case in point, bud, Nasri.

His only goal is the crucial opener against Roma, which changes the whole mindset of the team.

It's such fine margins. Stoke, Boro, Hull, West Ham, all lethargic displays but still with enough opportunities to have put a different slant on the outcome.

Mancini's team, same goes for Sunderland (thrice) and Everton (twice) - all possession, two or three chances spurned, lost it by an odd goal.

I will argue against myself here and say that although we are getting into goalscoring positions this season, they are not what you can define as clear cut.

Which requires the attack to be sharper than normal.

I suppose it does depend on what defines a goal scoring opportunity.

We tend to dominate possession and control the game and we do have efforts on goal but often they are without real threat and more speculative because we like to carve teams open and often try to walk it in the net.

In terms of chances we concede - through controlling possession we don't tend to give away too many opportunities. What we do suffer from is leaving ourselves short at the back or making stupid mistakes and that leads to conceding goals. We could concede 2 shots per game but the way we are playing that will end up in the net.

Your final point sums up mine precisely.

Visiting teams (Boro aside) have had minimal chances but their conversion rate is nigh on perfect.

It's the reason why a sense of foreboding is tangible both inside the stadium and amongst the players when even an average team decide to break in numbers and move the ball quickly beyond our flimsy midfield.

Goals win games and our lack of ruthlessness is the only failing this season, which can't be put squarely at the foot of the manager, some bizarre subs and selctions, aside.

Put it this way, if Messi was in the team this season, and the defence remained the same, this league title would already be won in our favour.

Dzeko, Jovetic, the eagerness of Negredo to leave, Sergio's fitness, have had the biggest impact.

Our defence has NEVER BEEN GOOD ENOUGH to consistently grind out 1-0 wins.

I agree. Our actual defence has been flawed for ages. The level of cover from in front of them has waxed and waned a bit but one of the biggest factors has been keeping possession. We have though consistently been able to ship stupid goals. Even if we had kept a few more clean sheets, they might only have led to 0-0 draws because we have consistently failed to be clincial enough; especially in tight games.

For all our defensive frailities, who has actually hammered us in terms of beating us by a big margin in a game in the last few seasons?

 

[flb]

I suppose it does depend on what defines a goal scoring opportunity.

We tend to dominate possession and control the game and we do have efforts on goal but often they are without real threat and more speculative because we like to carve teams open and often try to walk it in the net.

In terms of chances we concede - through controlling possession we don't tend to give away too many opportunities. What we do suffer from is leaving ourselves short at the back or making stupid mistakes and that leads to conceding goals. We could concede 2 shots per game but the way we are playing that will end up in the net.

Your final point sums up mine precisely.

Visiting teams (Boro aside) have had minimal chances but their conversion rate is nigh on perfect.

It's the reason why a sense of foreboding is tangible both inside the stadium and amongst the players when even an average team decide to break in numbers and move the ball quickly beyond our flimsy midfield.

Goals win games and our lack of ruthlessness is the only failing this season, which can't be put squarely at the foot of the manager, some bizarre subs and selctions, aside.

Put it this way, if Messi was in the team this season, and the defence remained the same, this league title would already be won in our favour.

Dzeko, Jovetic, the eagerness of Negredo to leave, Sergio's fitness, have had the biggest impact.

Our defence has NEVER BEEN GOOD ENOUGH to consistently grind out 1-0 wins.

I agree. Our actual defence has been flawed for ages. The level of cover from in front of them has waxed and waned a bit but one of the biggest factors has been keeping possession. We have though consistently been able to ship stupid goals. Even if we had kept a few more clean sheets, they might only have led to 0-0 draws because we have consistently failed to be clincial enough; especially in tight games.

For all our defensive frailities, who has actually hammered us in terms of beating us by a big margin in a game in the last few seasons?

You do realise that a 0-0 gets us a point?

We kept 18 clean sheets in Mancini's last season, his style of play and system didnt put as much pressure on the defenders, We have Vinnie,Zabba,Joe,Clichy and Kolorov still in the side today, we even had the "donkeys" who cant pass a ball Richards and Lescott in the team then aswell.

We had the best defence for was it three seasons running, now even the likes of Jones,Smalling and Evans have shipped less goals than us.

Its about altering your team around how the players are performing, he too stubborn to change.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

Every loss this season has had the same pattern.

So should we just keep banging our head against a wall, or try a different approach?

Although I agree that we haven't taken our chances, those chances have been very few and far-between especially in the last month or so.

When we're not moving the ball around quickly we become very easy to defend against

Would that be the last month when Aguero was less than half-fit? or Dzeko sidelined? Perhaps when Nasri was absent?

Remind me again, what did Pellegrini do prior to their return?

Regardless of the standard of the opposition, he operated without a recognised striker and Milner and Silva were able to contribute with goals and victories.

And all that, without Kompany even in the defensive ranks.

We're not moving the ball quickly enough because the one guy who does that for us has been helping his country win AFCON.

I lost count of the number of chances we had against United, West Ham, a crossbar and a stonewall pen against Stoke, even Chelsea the other week when both Sergio and Fernandinho should have scored.

Pellegrini's biggest failing, if you see it as that, is he retains a little too much faith in certain players, because of what they achieved last year.

And those same guys have not been at the races due to returning from the World Cup, injuries and a lack of momentum.

Again in agreement with you. Just picking up on a couple of points:

1. There is a very fine line between hitting the woodwork and scoring. We have hit the woodwork 10 times in the league this season which (with Burnley) is more than anyone else in the league. To put that figure into perspective last year we hit the woodwork 10 times ALL season.

2. There has been a fall off in our percentage of shots on target. We are not as ruthless which is down to the players and not the system.


A couple of interesting stats:

1. We have had more attempts at goal this season than any other team in Europe (5 main leagues)

The top 3 in Europe are:

City 410
Liverpool 398
Real Madrid 392

If we adjust for attempts per game the top 4 are:

Real Madrid 17.8
Bayern 17.8
Juventus 17.2
City 17.1


We are achieving these high figures WHILST restricting opponents to fewer opportunities in the Premier League than anyone else (except Southampton) this season AND than under Mancini in 2011/2012. (I loved Mancini so not taking sides)

 

[Lancet Fluke]

The deficiencies in our defence are no worse than previous. They are simply highlighted more because we can't take the chances we create.

I respect a lot of what you say generally but IMO this is utter bollocks. If you can't see that the defence is working less well under Pellegrini than under Mancini and that it is becoming less well organised with every passing month then you must be watching different matches from me. Personally I think it is to do with the whole way that Pellegrini wants us to defend. Much was made on here when he first arrived about how it was all about the high line, stepping up to play offside and proactively trying to win the ball as early and as high up the pitch as possible. I think he sees defending as more about trying to start attacks than stop the oppostion scoring which might be ok when we are scoring stacks of goals but as soon as the goals dry up at all then the whole defensive system becomes a total liability and can't be relied upon to help us grind out results. I think it is an almost impossible system to implement successfully, it asks way too much of the defenders who generally look shit in it (how are you going to look anything other than an impetuous, poor defender when you're expected to dive in 40 yards up the pitch) and it has subsequently resulted in all our defenders completely losing confidence and with that also their organisation and composure. I wasn't the biggest fan of Mancini but he helped Kompany and Zabaleta become genuinely world class defenders, this way of defending has reduced them to chumps. I've come to the conclusion it isn't even worth judging Mangala until as a team we go back to trying to defend properly because not one of our defenders has a chance of looking decent at the moment. It doesn't matter what personnel we have in there, they all look as incompetent as each other and I cannot believe that it isn't the fault of the system/manager. The irony is that Nastasic was fucked off supposedly because he didn't suit Pellegrini's defensive tactics but the truth is we don't have one defender that suits those tactics and I'm not convinced any exist anywhere because they are just rank bad defensive tactics imo. I like Pellegrini but defensively he has left a lot to be desired for much of his time with us. I'm sure I'll get all kinds of shit for saying it.

So what's different between this season and last, bud?

It is the same system which resulted in a league title and a cup?

Nobody is doing anything differently, outside of the tap being turned off in terms of goals and those margins between success and failure are even slimmer as a result.

Under Mancini, the system was effectively a third central defender due to Barry or De Jong screening. The failure to retain the title in 2012-13 was down to a lack of goals, as the tactics remained the same, outside of the disastrous experiment with three at the back.

I see the same correlation this season under Pellegrini.

My argument has long been if we had spent £32m on Sachez or Fabregas, rather than Mangala, we would not be talking about the failings of the defensive system.

Clichy started this season terribly, and was one of the main culprits of making Mangala look ridiculous, refusing to cut off that repeat ball inside the channel between them.

Zabba? I see a guy who has run through bricks walls for two years and played at a World Cup, he is still our best attacking outlet in this system, although I think games have caught up with him this season.

I think the manager can rectify a few issues by signing an all-round midfielder who has the energy levels to screen but also come and collect the ball off the back four and take away their responsibility for setting up attacks, when teams close the supply to Silva or Nasri?

I am not disagreeing with you about the goals drying up, of course they have and of course it is a big part of the problem. What has changed in the defensive system from last year? Well personally I wasn't happy at all with our defensive system for much of last season either and said so on here, I don't like that it puts pressure on the attackers to always be in great form. But this season, the system that to me always looked like a disaster waiting to happen has unravelled a bit and at times has become that disaster. I don't know how our goals conceded compares to last season or to the Mancini era but I only have to watch it with my own eyes to see that teams now have to do next to fuck all to cause us real problems. I like Pellegrini and I like that he wants us to predominantly be an attacking team, I just wish someone would tell him that for a defender, doing something as simple as standing up in front of an attacker can be extremely effective, that it is fine not to win the ball on the halfway line all the time and that following runners in and around the box is better than stepping up and hoping the linesman sticks his flag up.
I don't think you can even begin to compare us defensively now to when Mancini was in charge. Defending properly was an absolute priority to him, most of our defenders performed well under him and improved hugely. Even in his last season we defended reasonably well although there was definitely a drop off after he changed the coach during the previous summer.

 

[BobKowalski]

So should we just keep banging our head against a wall, or try a different approach?

Although I agree that we haven't taken our chances, those chances have been very few and far-between especially in the last month or so.

When we're not moving the ball around quickly we become very easy to defend against

Would that be the last month when Aguero was less than half-fit? or Dzeko sidelined? Perhaps when Nasri was absent?

Remind me again, what did Pellegrini do prior to their return?

Regardless of the standard of the opposition, he operated without a recognised striker and Milner and Silva were able to contribute with goals and victories.

And all that, without Kompany even in the defensive ranks.

We're not moving the ball quickly enough because the one guy who does that for us has been helping his country win AFCON.

I lost count of the number of chances we had against United, West Ham, a crossbar and a stonewall pen against Stoke, even Chelsea the other week when both Sergio and Fernandinho should have scored.

Pellegrini's biggest failing, if you see it as that, is he retains a little too much faith in certain players, because of what they achieved last year.

And those same guys have not been at the races due to returning from the World Cup, injuries and a lack of momentum.

Again in agreement with you. Just picking up on a couple of points:

1. There is a very fine line between hitting the woodwork and scoring. We have hit the woodwork 10 times in the league this season which (with Burnley) is more than anyone else in the league. To put that figure into perspective last year we hit the woodwork 10 times ALL season.

2. There has been a fall off in our percentage of shots on target. We are not as ruthless which is down to the players and not the system.


A couple of interesting stats:

1. We have had more attempts at goal this season than any other team in Europe (5 main leagues)

The top 3 in Europe are:

City 410
Liverpool 398
Real Madrid 392

If we adjust for attempts per game the top 4 are:

Real Madrid 17.8
Bayern 17.8
Juventus 17.2
City 17.1


We are achieving these high figures WHILST restricting opponents to fewer opportunities in the Premier League than anyone else (except Southampton) this season AND than under Mancini in 2011/2012. (I loved Mancini so not taking sides)

And what are the quality of the chances we create and concede and is this argument about chances created/conceded any different to LVG waving dossiers about and redefing what is and what isn't a 'long ball'?

 

[Lancet Fluke]

A very very good post mate, of course Tolmie is right about the goals but its the bloody system that makes all of our defenders as you say make last ditch stupid tackles on a regular basis.

Too many of these 'last ditch' as you put it tackles, are not last ditch though, they are taking place close to the half way line.

I understand the thinking behind them, ie getting us back on the attack quickly, the very thing many of us want us to do, but we're not winning them, so that is an issue, and we end up conceding daft goals as a result. If being 'pragmatic' means cutting these out then I'm all for it. Our CB's in particular should not be making 'last ditch' tackles on the half way line, they are better, more intelligent footballers than that, same goes for CM players not winning similar tackles and putting the CB's under unnecessary pressure.

Remind me the last time you can recall one of our midfielders making a tackle to actually win back possession, rather than a loose ball from the opposition or Fernandinho anticipating a cut-out?

We have zero bite across the middle of the pitch.

Horses for courses.

Clichy becomes a top grade full-back when he defends on the front foot and attempts to nip in and tackle. He also has the luxury of having the pace to get back and have another bite if there is still 30 yards in behind him.

Zabba is a liability with regards yellow cards attempting to do the same.

Kompany has always tried to anticipate and challenge high up the field, even under Mancini (sending off against United) He's simply not quick enough now to get away with it and has to tailor his game like a proper Italian great in the next few years.

Ironically, Mangala is actually perfect for the front foot thinking (when his maturity allows him not to panic and foul)

So the question is that the system might not be so flawed, more an acceptance from the manager that some of his personnel are?

So he has a defensive system that isn't suited to Zabaleta and Kompany (two of the most coveted defenders in Europe I would think), is suited to the 40 million pound man he signed in the summer but this is just conjecture because he hasn't actually played well in the system with any consistency yet, it didn't suit Nastasic. Bit of a recurring theme here, his defensive system doesn't seem to suit defenders which in my view is a bit of an issue. Not to mention that if the system doesn't suit any of the personnel he has at his disposal then maybe he needs to change it until he has the personnel?

 

[NQCitizen]

So should we just keep banging our head against a wall, or try a different approach?

Although I agree that we haven't taken our chances, those chances have been very few and far-between especially in the last month or so.

When we're not moving the ball around quickly we become very easy to defend against

Would that be the last month when Aguero was less than half-fit? or Dzeko sidelined? Perhaps when Nasri was absent?

Remind me again, what did Pellegrini do prior to their return?

Regardless of the standard of the opposition, he operated without a recognised striker and Milner and Silva were able to contribute with goals and victories.

And all that, without Kompany even in the defensive ranks.

We're not moving the ball quickly enough because the one guy who does that for us has been helping his country win AFCON.

I lost count of the number of chances we had against United, West Ham, a crossbar and a stonewall pen against Stoke, even Chelsea the other week when both Sergio and Fernandinho should have scored.

Pellegrini's biggest failing, if you see it as that, is he retains a little too much faith in certain players, because of what they achieved last year.

And those same guys have not been at the races due to returning from the World Cup, injuries and a lack of momentum.

Again in agreement with you. Just picking up on a couple of points:

1. There is a very fine line between hitting the woodwork and scoring. We have hit the woodwork 10 times in the league this season which (with Burnley) is more than anyone else in the league. To put that figure into perspective last year we hit the woodwork 10 times ALL season.

2. There has been a fall off in our percentage of shots on target. We are not as ruthless which is down to the players and not the system.


A couple of interesting stats:

1. We have had more attempts at goal this season than any other team in Europe (5 main leagues)

The top 3 in Europe are:

City 410
Liverpool 398
Real Madrid 392

If we adjust for attempts per game the top 4 are:

Real Madrid 17.8
Bayern 17.8
Juventus 17.2
City 17.1


We are achieving these high figures WHILST restricting opponents to fewer opportunities in the Premier League than anyone else (except Southampton) this season AND than under Mancini in 2011/2012. (I loved Mancini so not taking sides)

So you have to ask why we're doing so badly...

Imo it's because we're in possession so often we waste opportunities to score and fail to keep the concentration necessary to defend and those two issues feed into each other.

The application simply isn't there but the stats flatter us, if you crowd out Sergio, let's be honest Silva, Nasri or Navas aren't likely to score a clinical, quick shot instead of a tame effort/wasting time on the ball/opting to pass.

At the same time if you just break only a couple of times at least once Zab/Kolarov will be miles out of position trying to assist the attack, Kompany/Fernando/Mangala will be going flying right past you on the half way line and only really Clichy or Demichelis will prove any particular defensive resistance.

City can have 80 minutes of shifting it about in front of a massed defence, who only really need to negate absolute brilliance from Aguero or Yaya. The opposition has 10 minutes of breaking into space against City and it proves just as dangerous.

We don't defend well enough for a team not to rely on sporadic counters, but we attack too consistently to draw them out.

Tactically we have the set up that requires the most effort for the least return of any major team, where the defence or attack need to be absolutely 10/10 to come away with a win.

 

[Stephenhakin]

Can it simply not be down to the players not simply giving enough shit because that's what it looks like to me. Where the hell has the pressing the ball gone. I remember saying to a mate of mine that finally we had a team that actually pressed the ball. Look at the two best teams in modern history, Barcelona & Bayern. The way they played the game was very different but the fundamental attribute to their success was they were both pressing teams. They hunted the ball and won it more often than not. City need to get back to basics as on paper we have as good a side in the premier league as anyone. So for me its the lack of pressing leading to our downfall which in turns the players are either being told not to press which means its the managers issue or they just don't listen to the manager either way its a mess.