OK, let's be realistic

[Roachy]

But of course they're hungry. We've kept them starving for seven years, barring one (and then it was Liverpool and us second). And very often we took the “small” titles, F.A.Cups and League Cups, just for good measure. Furthermore, we've finished (temporarily — I repeat my conviction, temporarily) on a climax — a continental treble that only one other club (I forget who) has done in the entire history of the game, and then a fourth consecutive title which no-one else has done.
We have feasted. They have starved. Now we look slow and bloated. It will change, but it needs time to get hungry again.

The hunger should return. I think it will be quite a different team when it does though, but that is natural.

 

[Pollock's Deft Backheader]

If we turn it around against Everton will Villa become the new York away?

 

[Scaring Europe to Death]

It's really weird, because you could see this coming almost a year ago, and yet we still won the PL.
Ironically the defeat at Villa Park last season was even more one sided and then we dropped silly points at home to Spurs and Palace.
Cue the Newcastle game when Half Time couldn't come quick enough and yet somehow we won 3-2
Even now you look at our next three games and things could change dramatically

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

Nobody saw this coming and these players have not been in this position before and don't look as though they know how to deal with it sadly.
It started with injuries to our most important players on mass and these players then having to play not fully fit half a game or 20 mins at a time. That's doesn't do any player any good short or long term.
As a result confidence has absolutely drained from the team now. Imo the most disastrous result during this run was the feyenord game. These players don't even think they can win a game even at 3-0 up now.
Just goes to show how important confidence and momentum is in football. Both of which we are a million miles away from.
What is alarming for me is the lack of leaders in the squad at the moment which I didn't think was the case before this season.

And neither has Pep and he doesn’t look like he knows how to deal with it either.

 

[bitterblue78]

Anyone actually think that we may not sign anyone next month

 

[Gesario]

Anyone actually think that we may not sign anyone next month

Yep , bang on Who? From where ? Hope I’m wrong but can’t see anything major happening in Jan

 

[eyalluvitt]

Yep , bang on Who? From where ? Hope I’m wrong but can’t see anything major happening in Jan

I think we have to do business in Jan, we are in a tailspin and need something or someone to arrest it, because if we could with what we have, we’d have done it already

 

[ColinBellsjockstrap]

Anyone actually think that we may not sign anyone next month

As I said on the Villa match thread, what world class player would want to sign for us knowing we MAY be playing in the Championship next season?

They will wait to see what the verdict is. and who could blame them?

 

[FanchesterCity]

I've always been in favour of the mantra that if players don't want to be at City, then let them go, but the harder it is to get into the first team, the more frustrated players will be with many of them preferring a move elsewhere.
We have let a number of good players leave without replacing them with equivalents or better.

Perhaps Pep thought the likes of Nunes, Doku and Savinho would turn out to be revelation but there are no signs of that.

KdB is a hell of a player of a player to lost next, but it's coming. Replacing him will be damn difficult if not impossible.

The 115 can't be helping. I don't know how offputting it is to potential transfer targets but it certainly isn't adding anything. Pep will be gone in a couple of seasons, so again, that probably doesn't help matters. Are incoming targets really attracted to 2 seasons only? Perhaps my doubts are tainted by our current form, but it does like quite a task ahead of us.

 

[hilts]

Unfortunately we have some fans who have become like those fuckers we hate at OT and Anfield ...a sense of entitlement.

Absolutely not, one of the things that annoys during down periods is fans using incorrect words to try and silence criticism and compare us to other fans.

We have expectations not entitlement
We should be glad not grateful for what our owners and players have done.

Phrases like entitlement, show resoect, we used to be shit, support thru thick and thin blah blah are nonsense created by supporters who prefer to live in a fan cliche rather than discuss reality.

 

[HelloCity]

 

[Blue and true]

Yep , bang on Who? From where ? Hope I’m wrong but can’t see anything major happening in Jan

January is difficult, but not making signings is ostensibly the club signing Pep's death warrant; he isn't getting anything else from this squad. It's done.

 

[oakiecokie]

Absolutely not, one of the things that annoys during down periods is fans using incorrect words to try and silence criticism and compare us to other fans.

We have expectations not entitlement
We should be glad not grateful for what our owners and players have done.

Phrases like entitlement, show resoect, we used to be shit, support thru thick and thin blah blah are nonsense created by supporters who prefer to live in a fan cliche rather than discuss reality.

Well all I can say is that you are naive if you think that and must seldom come onto both the pre and post match threads which would show your analysis to be totally out of touch with reality.

 

[hilts]

Well all I can say is that you are naive if you think that and must seldom come onto both the pre and post match threads which would show your analysis to be totally out of touch with reality.

I frequent both

We play badly

Poster A we were shit today

Poster B support your team FFS we have seen worse than this

Poster A telling the story of the day as a supporter with emotional attachment

Poster B talking meaningless cliche bollocks


I agree some go too far but I've yet to hear a clichéd clapper say the same about the more deluded of their brethren.

We are all blues(mostly) and at the moment with the talent still available are performing really badly.

The clappy big blues need to find a safe space;-)

 

[oakiecokie]

I frequent both

We play badly

Poster A we were shit today

Poster B support your team FFS we have seen worse than this

Poster A telling the story of the day as a supporter with emotional attachment

Poster B talking meaningless cliche bollocks


I agree some go too far but I've yet to hear a clichéd clapper say the same about the more deluded of their brethren.

We are all blues(mostly) and at the moment with the talent still available are performing really badly.

The clappy big blues need to find a safe space;-)

Well I for one ain`t a happy bunny at the moment. ;)

 

[hilts]

Well I for one ain`t a happy bunny at the moment. ;)

Don't think any of us are tbh mate

Every fan base has their extremes I suppose it's just at this time the blue Victor Meldrews are on safer ground than the blue William Wallaces

 

[Mancity1980]

And what does that have to do with the here and now?

Lots of blues went through decades of rubbish, this is nothing, we need to remember the good times and not get too wound up with the present. Plus the elements that made us so good 12 months are still there, we can get there again and even if we don’t it’s been a blast.

 

[.db.]

Great post oakie. I've just posted something similar on a WhatsApp group There's no one person to blame for this it's a collective failure from top to bottom. In the boardroom, the executive suite, Pep and the players.

• CFG is one. It's Soriano's vanity project and I believe has diverted attention from things that should have been done to keep us at the top. The cost is high and the benefit minimal.
• City is the jewel in the crown of CFG but we don't have a dedicated CEO or COO, while the other clubs have theirs, who are solely focused on one club. How many clubs are Soriano and Roel de Vries focused on?
• Txiki Begiristain has seemingly been counting the days to retirement. Our recruitment has been sub-par for a club with our ambition and stature.
• One clear failure was not being ruthless after the CL final. A focused approach would have seen that the squad was getting older, and maybe needed some younger, hungrier players taking the place of those who had won everything and were in the latter years of their careers. Yet we're still watching players like KDB & Stones struggling for fitness, Walker losing his pace and any resemblance to a defender. Bernardo is strolling through games, producing nothing. We don't have a left back so we're reduced to playing Nunes.
• Pep has to take a lot of the blame. His insistence on a small squad has meant injuries have killed us and even when fil, players are being run into the ground, leading to more injuries. They're not getting time to recover.
• Pep has turned us from a team that played the fast, incisive, one-touch football we played in 2017/18 and the following seasons, into the plodding, painful shambles we are now, with no organisation, intensity, accuracy or pressing. Teams, even average teams, play through us so easily. Does he have any answers? It doesn't look like it, as he can't seem to pick the players up or getting them playing anywhere near to the standard they should be. Perhaps the players have lost faith in him, or he has lost his mojo. Either way, we can't carry on like this.
• And then there are the players. We've seen players lose form and confidence temporarily but others have shouldered the burden until they've recovered. But no one seems to have any confidence or shows any leadership. The players all used to know where their teammates were, where they needed to be and what they needed to do. Now they're a disorganised shambles and no one is ever in the right place. They're making schoolboy errors. Our pass accuracy used to be incredible but now we can't seemingly find a blue shirt. Rather than being a well-drilled unit, we're eleven scared individuals.

This isn't a blip, or just needs a bit of a refresh to put things back to where they were. It's a full-scale crisis that needs some radical and long-term thinking. Khaldoon needs to bang some heads together and shake things up. And if that means some senior executives, coaching staff and players bear the brunt, then so be it.

I’d be very happy if City could leave the CFG. I don’t see the point in it whatsoever. And if it has to exist for the sake of Soriano’s wishes, I don’t see the point of Manchester City being part of it.

The CFG doesn’t bring anything to Manchester City Football Club. There isn’t a single sponsor or sponsor level we couldn’t have achieved a contract with off our own backs. If Nissan wouldn’t have joined the CFG without us taking on Yokohama into the CFG, then we would very easily have found another sponsor at that level to come on board as a club on our own.

And what other benefits do we see outside the odd one (can’t think of many more than Nissan though) sponsor or so? What does Manchester City get out of the CFG?

Aaron Mooy and Savinho? A few loan moves for fringe players? Fucking hell, it’s not worth the lack of focus on just Manchester City for that massive list of benefits!

Can the CFG sell City? Can Mansour buy the shares of Manchester City from the CFG? At the very least, can we at least let Soriano do his thing with the CFG and employ some top board members who are Manchester City employees, solely concentrating on Manchester City?

 

[TShed]

I’d be very happy if City could leave the CFG. I don’t see the point in it whatsoever. And if it has to exist for the sake of Soriano’s wishes, I don’t see the point of Manchester City being part of it.

The CFG doesn’t bring anything to Manchester City Football Club. There isn’t a single sponsor or sponsor level we couldn’t have achieved a contract with off our own backs. If Nissan wouldn’t have joined the CFG without us taking on Yokohama into the CFG, then we would very easily have found another sponsor at that level to come on board as a club on our own.

And what other benefits do we see outside the odd one (can’t think of many more than Nissan though) sponsor or so? What does Manchester City get out of the CFG?

Can the CFG sell City? Can Mansour buy the shares of Manchester City from the CFG?

Your right CFG has not impact what so ever on City. Separate accounts so we are a business in our own right. Nothing has fed us as far as players except Lampard, who incidentally the likes of is exactly what we need right now.

 

[.db.]

Well I for one ain`t a happy bunny at the moment. ;)

I’m still happy. This is just a natural, very overdue, dip.

By rights we didn’t have the squad to win the league in 2022-23. I thought we were lacking in depth in midfield, but almost every single player stayed fit and were all bang in form from February onwards. Until De Bruyne went off in the CL final, Rodri, Gundo and De Bruyne didn’t miss a beat for months and performed at a level I’ve not seen from many other midfields ever before in the sport. If Rodri and De Bruyne had been out like they have in the last 18 months between them, we probably wouldn’t have won a thing that season, such was the lack of midfield depth. Yet they stayed fit and we did something special and won the PL, FA Cup and CL.

By rights we didn’t have the squad to break the record fourth league title in a row last season. We had a small squad still, smaller than 2022-23, yet we won the Super Cup, Club World Cup and did break that record and won the PL.

We’ve done better than our depth in quality should have in the last two seasons. David Silva and then Fernandinho leaving left our midfield very thin on the ground, especially last season n’all losing Gündoğan. If we’d won the PL in 2020-21 and 2021-22 and then not again for the last two seasons, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But we did win the PL and have actually won two trebles, or six trophies over the two seasons.

Now the drop off has come and it’s been very long in the pipeline and completely expected for me. It’s come as no surprise at all. However, I’m happy as Larry still because we will learn a lot from this season as a club and will hopefully rectify things on what we’ve learnt.