Mate, you might be right, so might I. Its all about opinions and you have set yours out in an intelligent and thoughtful way without attacking the manager and the players. Follow through on the logic that most believe that playing our 'usual' team of of the 4 at back, Fern/Rodri in front and then an attacking 5 of Gundo/Bernie/Phil/Kev/Mahrez we would have won that game. I really don't think we would. Maybe Fern would have stopped the goal - difficult to see because it was a ball from deep into the channel. Maybe our front 5 would have gelled better. What I do know is that it would not made one jot of difference to Chelsea tactics.
He tweaked on Saturday and it didn't work. He has had three shots this season at beating Tuchel with the same outcome irrespective of the players he has fielded. What does he do next season? Play the way we always play with a settled team or tweak more and more. Interesting to see which and the outcome. Of course all bets are off if we sign a world class striker. We just need to bang it up to the big man ;-)
Sorry, I simply don't agree. Gundogan has played DM successfully loads of times and Sterling at least troubled them. Might as well blame Bernie and Kevin for being pretty ineffective. We lost because our players from front to back didn't perform to their best level and Chelsea did.
Whilst I don't think Pep 'fucked up' I do believe that the tactics and shape applied by Tuchel is perfect for strangling us - certainly a huge factor in why our players didn't perform. We would have been beaten irrespective of what DM was in place. We didn't exactly look a different team when Fern came on and Gundo pushed forward.
The problem for Pep which will not go away is how does he change what we usually do to beat Chelsea.
I'd like a guy who when Pep fucks up the line-up takes the bull by the horns and takes charge on the pitch.
Haaland as seen in the Dortmund games is reliant on the setup being right for him to thrive. Kane has shown his adaptability and just gets shit done, and we lack that leadership at the top of the pitch. Sterling as attacking captain is an embarrassment to the club.
How was it bizarre. I don’t think it worked like he wanted it to, well obviously it didn’t we lost, but there was nothing bizarre about it, two wingers high and wide to stretch a packed defence, hopefully for midfielders to get into the spaces left by centre backs covering full backs. Unfortunately chelsea countered that plan with 2 dms dropping very deep and we couldn’t adapt or pick our way through ,but there was nothing bizarre about the idea.
Agree mate. That’s what I have been saying since Saturday but we seem to be in the minority.I think he was right to try and tweak things and the fact that it didn't work doesn't means that he will have to try something different again next season when we play Chelsea. I don't believe Pep's changes are what led though to our players under performing: that is on each one of them individually and I say that not to blame anyone, it is what it is.
City have to lick their wounds and come back stronger next season in every way.
And you were perfectly wrong about Rodri.
Did we? Not different enough though mate.We looked like a completely different team to me when Fern came on.
Ah, that obsession with fairness would explain why, on the biggest night of Fern’s career, he axed him in favour of that shell of a footballer called Sterling.But there is another explanation: we stopped Garcia from moving to Barca and hardly played him all season, Pep rates him highly, Spain's manager as well (because he is a very intelligent player), and Pep decided that it would be fair to give Garcia a rare start, given that Garcia gained nothing for his development as a player by sitting on the bench virtually the whole season.
Think any City fan must already know that Pep wants to be fair to the players. That's why he played Carson and Garcia. For Pep, being fair is utterly important. He will give chances to the talents in the academy as well. In the first months of the campaign Pep played 8 (!) players who at the time were U20, and gave starts to THB, Bernabe, Doyle, Palmer, Delap...
Yup, wouldn’t disagree, although the intensity of that Chelsea press would have still made for a very tough task even if everyone had brought their ‘A’ game. They blitzed our 1st team with the same efficiency as they blitzed our 2nd team and we created next to nothing in any of our 3 meetings with them. It’s rare that we’re ever going to face a team like that, which might make it an extravagance in the current climate for us to spend a fortune on a proper bully of a striker, but if we want to win the CL I think we’re going to have toI don't think any system would have helped much given how far off their best all the performances of our players were individually and I certainly don't believe that the system caused the players to under perform.
That said, I do think the system was off and I am now more convinced than ever that we should have matched their shape and played against type in some ways. However, I understand why Pep finds that very hard to do but by going there, he could really prove himself to be the greatest.
He's had the team play in all sorts of ways (all variations on a theme) so I believe he can afford to drill them on playing very defensively and countering. Also on using Ederson's long ball ability. All that would be aided by being able to stick Conan The Barbarian upfront. I'm worried though that the latter is an opportunity City won't take. We have a fantastic operation on the whole but I have said over and over again that we are not ruthless enough in the transfer market; if we had been, we'd have gone and signed Kante from Leicester. It's one thing, I think we could learn from Chelsea.
The minority are always right:)Agree mate. That’s what I have been saying since Saturday but we seem to be in the minority.