Prioritise Barcelona or Chelsea?

[Didsbury Dave]

Can't be doing with losing to Chelsea again, strongest team for both matches.

Pellegrini needs to rise above that sentiment, though. We all feel we owe them one after the luck they've had against us. But the bigger picture is what counts.

 

[bobmcfc]

Things have been going too well so I think we were bound to have a player injury disaster lol it wouldn't be city without a crisis or three

 

[Castiel]

Hmm

So confident

It'd just be ironic. I'm not confident of beating you at the Etihad again, hoping for a replay. That is unless you do actually throw it for the sake of Barca.

If we beat barca I will need a month to recover

You can if you play your best, but you'd have to be tactical about it and be more pragmatic at the Nou Camp. Not sure if Pelle is willing to do that. You can certainly beat them at home IMO, unless your injury situation gets worse. They're not what they were under Pep but it's still Barca.

 

[bobmcfc]

It'd just be ironic. I'm not confident of beating you at the Etihad again, hoping for a replay. That is unless you do actually throw it for the sake of Barca.

If we beat barca I will need a month to recover

You can if you play your best, but you'd have to be tactical about it and be more pragmatic at the Nou Camp. Not sure if Pelle is willing to do that. You can certainly beat them at home IMO, unless your injury situation gets worse. They're not what they were under Pep but it's still Barca.

I'm sure we can defend when we need to but we won't sacrifice our attacking flair to do it. We are still a work in progress and we need to add to our squad before it will be considered a complete team. We lack quality in depth but we will get there castiel

 

[Castiel]

I'm sure we can defend when we need to but we won't sacrifice our attacking flair to do it. We are still a work in progress and we need to add to our squad before it will be considered a complete team. We lack quality in depth but we will get there castiel

The concern is the away goal rule if you take them on in a proper open game at home, thats the issue with the CL. I'll be rooting for you anyway, fuck Barca. Wait till you experience their antics. If people think Mourinho is bad...

 

[mike channon´s windmill]

Thing is when you say "throw" Chelsea in the cup I take it that the implication is that we field an understrength side (with half a dozen already out!) So no Yaya, Dave or Vinny for example?
In this scenario I would be inclined to agree with you as we (and more importantly MP) could easily pass off another defeat to the Ego without the sense that Maureen would "have our number" in terms of looking ahead to meatier encounters in the coming seasons.
As I will be travelling up to Barcelona for the game it will have that "on a jolly" feel about it and at the moment I´m fairly relaxed about the tie. But what shockwaves we would create if we went to Camp Nou and turned them over!! This I feel would help us enormously when we talk about the bigger picture

 

[bobmcfc]

I'm sure we can defend when we need to but we won't sacrifice our attacking flair to do it. We are still a work in progress and we need to add to our squad before it will be considered a complete team. We lack quality in depth but we will get there castiel

The concern is the away goal rule if you take them on in a proper open game at home, thats the issue with the CL. I'll be rooting for you anyway, fuck Barca. Wait till you experience their antics. If people think Mourinho is bad...

Hopefully we wise up after the Chelsea lesson. I'm really looking forward to seeing messi for Reelzies (sorry I get giddy when I'm in a fantastic mood)

Dave is usually the one on here telling us all to man up !

 

[Chris in London]

I agree with this. It's a risky stategy, given the impact it could have on our title challenge in terms of fatigue/injuries etc, but a necessary gamble in my eyes.

We could prioritise the Barca game over the Chelsea one, and plausibly lose both which would be disastrous.

The problem with this approach is that playing your strongest team against Chelsea will guarantee that they will no longer be your strongest team against Barca. They'll be knackered from playing 3 times in 6 days. There has to be some sort of rotation in there somewhere.

We could get away with some rotation, but Hart, Zabaleta, Kompany, Toure, and Silva in particular have to start all three games.

I'd agree with that - Clichy and Kolarov for instance you can rotate relatively well, and maybe even (fitness permitting) Micah could start against Sunderland instead of Zaba. You also would look hard at the option of bringing players off early if we are 3-0 up against Sunderland after 70 minutes. But Yaya, VK and Silva to my mind have got to start all 3 games and Zaba certainly 2 out of the 3.

 

[zandvoort blue]

Prioritise in this order:

Norwich
Sunderland
Chelsea
Barcelona
Stoke

 

[bobmcfc]

Prioritise in this order:

Norwich
Sunderland
Chelsea
Barcelona
Stoke

This ^