Post Match Thread: City v Juventus

[waspish]

Was interesting to see the intensity in their attacks before our goal and after it. Before it they didnt care, were happy with 0-0created no problem for us. They didnt test our defence.

After the goal they started to attack us and we just didnt defend at all, Hart had to make saves and the two goals of course...

Make no mistake this Juve is in shit form and lost crucial players but their tactics and mentality was 100% spot on tonight. And that won them the game even if its really hard to beat City in Etihad 1-0 down.

Their strikers had probably 1-1 chance each all game, they scored two from those. Bony should look at those and learn. If he doesnt start to score when he can lead the line, not much point in him leading the line. His first touch is great but not much comes off of it. Dzeko at least scored the odd goals, lot of important ones as well.

We need to qualify but we need to do it in 1st place to avoid some crazy tough opponents in next round. Txiki knows this, Pelle knows this, players know this. We need at least two wins, 1 draw until we meet Juve again on 5th matchday.

So for me if its not a win in Germany, than a win at home vs Sevilla, then draw at least in Sevilla before Juve-City game our chances for 1st place are gone. And as its CL we might as well find ourselves in a battle for 2nd who knows.

Agree and at 1-0 up pelegrini should be wise enough and experienced enough to know that and shut up shop sit back keep it tight and hit them on the break but we kept going at them leaving us short at the back

 

[sky tot]

Anyone else think Otamendi was slow to react for their 2nd goal ?

 

[kiam06]

Although our love our team we have to be one of the worst teams I've ever seen when it comes to concentration.

In the Champions League you have to concentrate for the full game as the smallest mistake will cost you.

In the Premier League we get away with our mistakes 9/10 times and end up getting the points but at the very top level we need to learn to stay switched on.

Juve were there for the taking I actually thought they were quite poor but they concentrated even after going a goal behind and kept their discipline and guess what they took the points.

We must learn.

 

[Deleted member 58678]

We played okay but they punished us the two occasions we defended pooy.

Sterling's got to take these fucking chances he's getting. He's had the same chance in almost every game he's played for us so far and missed every single one!

We also passed the ball too slowly too often.

Disappointing night though.

 

[ChicagoBlue]

Wrote this yesterday on the pre-match thread:

"Definitely a game we can, and should, win, especially given current form of both teams.

That said, this smacks of Napoli all over again....high degree of excitement at, and about, City and an Italian team coming to the Etihad to steal points from us on the break.

Fingers and toes crossed that this really IS our time, this time!

ChicagoBlue, Yesterday at 12:07 AMReportSend Private Message
#119"

Hmmmm, wish it had not come true!! We are STILL overcome by the event. This was, by far, the most pedestrian City game we have seen this season. There can be only one reason for that. Evra's post-match comments were spot on! We TRY to play like we THINK we are supposed to play in the CL, rather than play the way WE PLAY to win at the Etihad every other week.

Biggest mistake for me was not starting with Navas and Sterling on the wings, with Bony up top and Silva in the hole. It was ALWAYS going to be the case that Juve were going to play a compact defensive/counter-attacking game, and Sterling & Navas are the two best players to get us in behind AND to cover their full backs on the attack. With the new players, Nasri has become, for me, a "give Silva a rest" player, because he strongly wants to be that forward play maker and not chase back. As for De Bruyne, it looks like his position is going to be out on the left, as opposed to the right, so Sterling might end up on the right. Either way, we need to get things sorted with the forward rotations, because we look like we are not quite sure who should be where when the new guys come on later in a game.

Fernandinho was IMMENSE tonight and deserved a goal. Mandzukic and more especially Morata showed Bony and Sterling what a REAL goal scorer looks like. One sniff = One goal!!! Sterling should have had two sitters and Bony's left peg appears to have previously been on a stool! That is two or three dead certs he has missed in the last two games with his left peg, and Sterling appears to need 4 or 5 one on ones with the keeper before he will put one away. Maybe if he could work on lifting the ball every now and then???!

 

[paulsimpson]

Honestly, I thought we were incredibly unlucky to lose that game. We should have played much better, but we created by far the better chances and in much greater numbers and we were undone by two fantastic goals that there wasn't a whole lot we could have done about either (except maybe have a bit more pressure on Pogba for the first one, but it's still a ridiculously perfect pass).

Some pretty poor performances, particularly from Yaya and Nasri who will both play as slowly as they are allowed to play, which today was a snails pace. Silva clearly not fit and was pretty poor, no idea why Navas was dropped as he offers us the width that we've been using all season to great success. Bony frustrates me, as he looks to have it all set but just cannot get into his goalscoring rhythm, he's holding it up well and bringing in other players, but is snatching at chances.

Very frustrating night, but I thought we controlled the game a lot better than we have most of these games and really didn't give them much of a sniff untill the first goal and the second goal is just horribly unlucky, to bounce of Kolarovs head directly into the stride of their attacker, to curl it in perfectly from outside the box. If teams were that clinical every game then they'd never lose. We need to just get into the winning habit in the CL, as we look nervous more than anything, not playing our natural flowing game.

Didn't see anything from Juve that makes me think we can't beat them at their place though, we weren't outclassed in the way we have been against Barca, Dortmund and Real in the past. So chin up and bring on the next game

Excellent post . We were the better team and just did not take our chances. Juvé are so delighted they've won here tonight . Pellegrini will get it right . He probably will feel that with a little more tempo and risk the result would have been different.
After the disappointment we will all look at it in a different light in a couple of days .

 

[blueincy]

This but apparently you're not allowed to criticise Bony

For such a big guy he goes down quite easy I thought, if he would've scored after he nutmegged that player then nobody would be slagging him off but he didn't so there for he is shit...

 

[HelloCity]

Thought we did ok but that equaliser came out of no where and knocked us for six.

I love Pellegrini to bits but when they bring in Pep it's results like that which will be given as the reason.

 

[B\connellblue]

There are a few observations on tonights performance. Some have been mentioned already like Navas who should have been sold in the summer. Bony is I'm afraid to say is useless or at least he is in our side. Controversially I believe part of our problem is Sagna who because he has defended so well this season is hard to drop but he doesn't give us anything like the threat Zabs does, more often than not he slows the play down. Kolorov isn't disciplined enough to be in a successful champions league side ( in all honesty he is a liability most of the time). and finally whats with the powderpuff shooting ?put your foot through the ball for fuck sake, Fern could show some of them how it's done.
0 marks for pellers tonight as well for being far to slow to ring the changes.

 

[Eaglechief]

The plus side, we created a number of good scoring opportunities against last season's finalists (so we can't be that bad).

The negative side, we seem to play with too much fear and caution in our opening Chumps League games, our key players seem to play with an inferiority complex against the very top teams, otherwise I can't explain why we constantly under-perform in this competition.