Post Match Thread: Barca vs City

Blueband Brother said:
Barcelona played a good match. Controlled and adjusted the pace of the game throughout the match, attacked with coordination and intent and were successful in disecting our unsure defense and should have won by a big margin if it wasn't for Joe Hart.

Aguero had that chance and unfortunately he flopped his lines and that was the end of it. Another point about Aguero is that his Tevez-esque selfishness is getting more and more apparent to others more so because the team is going through a bad spell. He needs to change this. Yaya Toure looks exhausted and needs a break of two games or so. The constant games and all that comes with the AFCON tournament has taken it's toll. Silva was very quiet and did not step up today. Kompany was nothing special but I think people are turning a blind eye to the fact that Dimechelis has passed it. Not good enough anymore and we are drifting towards the damaging position of having a particular glaring problem and turning a blind eye to focus on Kompany. Mangala or even Boyata should be given more opportunities.

It was always going to be difficult after the first game but I think we should take this one on the cheek and be cheeky enough to salvage a bit of pride and I dare say positivity from the scoreline.

Thanks to Joe Hart

Yaya Didn't look exhausted when he came off and sat down in the dugout! Wasn't even blowing!! ...
 
I'm proud of the effort the lads gave tonight and relieved and thankful to Pellegrini for putting his dogmatic 442 to one side for one match thus giving us a puncher's chance of going through. However much effort we put in tonught, the damage was already done from the first leg. If we'd have set up at home the way.we set up at the Nou Camp, with home advantage I reckon we could have at least held Barca if not nicked a win, but this tie was lost from the first game and it was always going to be an up hill battle to get through.

Credit to Barca, they, Bayern and Real are a level above the rest and Barca showed how far ahead the elite of Europe are tonight. Personally I would have started with either Nasri or Yaya (probably Yaya) but not both. I thought today it was obvious we needed players with graft and endeavour to be patrolling the channels and Navas alongside Milner would have been my starting choices out wide.

Pellegrini did what he mostly fails to do by moving Yaya further forward replacing him with Milner in the middle when it was obvious he was flagging and then taking him off altogether when Yaya was all but dead on his feet. We have 3 out and out strikers and IMO 4 No 10's in Yaya, Silva, Nasri and Jovetic and from here on in I would like to think that MP will select a balanced team to see us through to the end of the season and not just pick our best players and hope it all comes good.

It saddens me to think that it possibly took rumours of Pellegrini's job being on the line before he did what was necessary to try and win a big match where we were the underdogs. Whether he stays or goes I hope he's learned a lesson that tactics and decent players who are given a viable bespoke plan by the manager win matches. We'll never know what might have been if Aguero had scored. Hart played possibly the best game I've seen him perform in at one end and we just lacked that killer cutting edge to take advantage at the other.

All in all I'm proud of our efforts tonight albeit I'm disappointed we're out, but having said that, I'm fuckin even more gutted about our clueless performance in the first leg because that was where this ties was ultimately lost for us making tonight's match almost academic. Over to you Manuel.......
 
Quite similar to last year against Barca really.

Hart was unbelievable, so was Messi in the first half.

I thought we were pretty poor, 1-0 isn't a fair reflection. If we had lost 3-0 or 4-0 tonight, we could have no complaints. Hart really kept us in the game with a world class performance.

Players like Yaya and Nasri don't do anywhere near enough defensively. We haven't really got a system and way of playing anymore, it seems like it's a case of just throwing good players onto the pitch. I'm not really sure what our style of play is. It's very Arsenal-esque for me, having good players will win you a lot of games, but you come short in the big games.

Big summer ahead. We've bought terribly since winning the league in 2012 and we can't afford another poor transfer window. We're going to be replacing players like Yaya, Nasri and Dzeko this summer, the recruitment has to be spot on.

End of an era for this group of players.
 
Sergi0 Na5r1 said:
avoidconfusion said:
If only we had played 4-5-1 at home...

I do think that would have made a considerable difference, and made the game a lot closer than it was.


451 should be the default line up from us in Europe, if we had played the system all year we would have been so much more comfortable with it. there are going to be some hard decisions to make soon.
 
Damocles said:
lancs blue said:
Ducado said:
Can you and a few other just give it a rest, or at least post it in the relevant thread

Excuse me?? It's a valid point in response to BP's highlighted comment.

I think he means can you put it in the big Txiki Begiristain thread please?

It's a post match discussion and actually Sky raised this very point about how few of those signings actually started our biggest game of the season so I think it is relevant in here.
 
Seen a few people remarking that Yaya is finished.

I disagree. he's miles off last year's player.

But that was only months ago. He's not that old. He obviously let himself go in the Summer, but I don't see wy he can't get fit in the Summer and get back to his best. He's been through a lot.

Don't write him off
 

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