Post Match Thread: Barca vs City

dom said:
Off the ball, Barca pressed..

Off the ball, we shuffled...
Click to expand...

City do not press. City have not pressed a game for 5+ years. For whatever reason, it is not in the mind of Pellers or Mancini. Don't understand why not, especially in europe but also now in the premiership as teams have worked us out.
Barca, Real, Bayern, PSG, Juve all press - with or without the ball. City don't. Complete arrogance in my book
 
The only positives I can see is the general success of the 4-5-1 which we have been craving for a while. Would also work a lot better without that midfield having to carry Yaya around the park all night. Time to cash in on him before his value drops more than it no doubt has already.

Yaya's laziness was only bearable when he was throwing in quality goals which unfortunately hasn't been happening.

Hart will take great confidence from that performance and it might just be enough to get us across the line in 2nd if we learn from that effort in the second half.

Aguero never to take a pen again, that miss has been coming for a while. Put your foot through it FFS.

Bony looks at odds with possession football, which will hopefully not be long term. If we fail with the signing of Bony on top of Mangala and Fernando then what's that? $100 million wasted when we have little scope to spend? That's the most disappointing aspect of the season. We haven't strengthened whatsoever and our squad now needs rebuilding.
 
mrbelfry said:
Didnt really see the big improvement with a 5 man midfield that others have. Still acres of space in there. In my mind this game shows exactly where we are lacking this season and it isn't formation.

We seem to have lost our identity as a team and every simple thing seems hard work. Players don't seem to enjoy themselves at the minute and consequently aren't supporting each other as we should and merely waiting for someone to do something magical. case in point was when aguero robbed the keeper and tried the shot into the box. There wasn't a single city player giving him any option but a difficult shot and there was several barca players back. No one went wide to help Sergio and no one was racing into the box for a rebound or cross.

We have a serious lack of movement from any of the players in front of the ball. And our forwards are playing too far apart to link up effectively. We are really poor at playing with width so stretching the play is pointless. We need to have our players buzzing around each other near the box rather than out wide because we can't cross and we don't have the players in the box.

Defensively we are very poor with players either being bypassed in midfield or over commiting. Barca by contrast close down all the angles and intercept so much and most other midfields do this better than us. We desperately need some stability in the back 4 - Kompany screaming at everyone for not keeping the line when he was the only player keeping Suarez onside in the first half and Sagna getting caught upfield or sucked into the middle are symptomatic of that.

I'm generally a fan of Milner but the more praise and attention he gets the worse he plays. Nasri is either great or sulking and is most effective when either taking on players or when playing the triangles with Silva and Toure. You can normally tell in the first 5 minutes if he's gonna play well or not.

Silva is at his best when he can play short snappy passes so he's needs players close to him or running off him.

Man that was a more of an essay than I intended to write but the wife is watching greys anatomy and I'm bored :)
Click to expand...
Great summe mate, thanks!!!

At least bring another view of the whole thing, and its refreshing to ear someone who thinks, thats not all here ist to change the tactics, sack the manager, or throw some players away.
 
We press, but honestly its about 10-15 minutes per game and even that is not that high pressure, high intensity stuff. Its a limited version of pressing.

We still try to find all kind of reasons why we dont press.
I mean we try to copy Barca arent we? Then we should do everything to copgy their killing pressing especially around 2008/2009/2010. That pressing with tiki-taka was immense. If you only do the tiki-taka part of it it can be a mess...

We either press hard or will give up our style and defend+counter well. But we cant defend or counter basically effectively.
Also cant press.

What we can do is play our possession based game when opponent let us. Or when we are in extremely great form. But no team is in huge form ever trough a whole season. Maybe for 2-3 or 4-5 months max.

Especially Pelle's system with 442 it should be all about workrate and pressing when we dont have the ball. Yet we come up with excuses that Aguero cannot press as he will be tired to attack, same with Silva, Yaya dont have legs to run unless its a sprint forward, Nasri would be wasted tracking back, Dzeko dont have energy etc...

LOL.

Than look back Bayern under Heynckess. Tracking back from stars like Ribery or Robben. The way they helped out the team off the ball. And also having enough energy to create chances or finish them...
 
Brilliant performance from Joe Hart, I thought he and Messi were the best players on the pitch. I hope Hart and Messi exchanged shirts at the end.

Although City were outclassed Aguero was having a few sniffs. I thought Silva and Yaya were pretty decent too. I don't like Navas and think he's an awful player (reminds me of Lennon) but he was causing them a few scares early on in the second half, him and Milner were doing very well with their movement, directness and Milners pressing

Biggest difference for me is that Barca are more of a team, City don't always play like one. Seeing a magician like Silva on the ball and some players not even making runs or being on the same wavelength as him. People throw the phrase out world class way too often but it's in games like this you really see who is world class and who isn't
 
Positives. We kept 11 men on the field. Negatives. It didn't make a toss of difference.

Hart. Its all been said but great performance. Outside of that and at the risk of sounding like a broken record its all about belief again. We had zero belief that we could really beat Barca and qualify. PSG gave them a better game then we did. PSG with the same FFP restrictions showed what can be done with belief. That and work rate. But the work rate is a by product of the belief and that is Pellers job. To instil that belief.

Ah well. We were better in the second half but they never convinced me it was on. Secure a top three finish and then see where we are in the summer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top
✖
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.