Pep's achilles heel throughout his career has been the Champions League and he has always been questioned about it. He's gone safety first as a result and it was totally unnecessary.It is. 1-0 isn't the end of the world but there were so many puzzling and downright annoying features in the game. Last season we went to Wembley and beat them 3-1. We went 2 up (penalty scored by Gundogan, note) they got one back then Pep, almost for the first time as manager of City, showed some pragmatism by closing the game down. Really don't see why we didn't do this last night.
Play KDB & Sane for an hour then bring on Silva/Gundogan and Mahrez to close the game down. We've got 4 full days to recover from this game before we play Palace. Really baffling and really infuriating.
Because Pep is exempt from criticism. Don't be surprised if Pep picks exactly the same eleven next Weds.Pep has cost us in the UCL once again, he’s just so naive it’s unbelievable. First of all he couldn’t have put out a worse XI with the players available. Playing Mahrez means we can’t utilise the right wing because he is so bad it’s unusable when he plays, David Silva has been out of form since February so should’ve played KDB who always puts in a good performance vs Spurs, the same goes with Sane whenever he’s up against Trippier.
He then allows Aguero to take the penalty instead of Gundogan, Aguero has missed more UCL penalties than he has scored. Why is nobody at the club getting this information, the same lack of research cost us the game at Anfield as Pep claimed he didn’t know how bad Mahrez’s penalty record was. Lloris wouldn’t suspect Gundogan to take a penalty for us as he’s only taken one penalty for us outside of a penalty shootout, he’s our best penalty taker by far, I mean he scored in the UCL final!
He then refuses to bring on our most impactful subs in KDB and Sane until the 88th minute which seems like a multiple occurrence as he has built up a tendency to leave key substitutions too late. I see Poch on the Spurs bench with an iPad so he can get a better view of the game, why doesn’t Pep utilise the technology available to make better judged decisions, maybe then he will see how poorl we’re really playing.
I feel with Pep in the UCL it’s just bad decision after bad decision. The starting XI next game must be:
GK: Ederson RB: Walker CB: Kompany and Laporte LB: Mendy CDM: Fernandinho CM: Bernardo (Gundogan if he’s injured) and KDB LW: Sane RW: Sterling ST: Agüero
Yes, can take absolutely nothing for granted at the minute.We’ll know around 10pm next Wednesday if Pep made the right calls last night. We could still have the League in our hands and be through to the CL semis in which case he did or we could be out of the CL and Liverpool have the league in their hands and therefore he didn’t.
Anyone else getting very nervous?
Pep's achilles heel throughout his career has been the Champions League and he has always been questioned about it. He's gone safety first as a result and it was totally unnecessary.
We can still go through. But we could easily go out too and all because the coach temporarily lost faith in his own footballing beliefs and his own players.
Moaning Marvin.We lost because Aguero missed a pen but mainly because our coach, got it wrong in spite of having better players.
You think otherwise?
KDB wasn't.The biggest game is the one immediately in front of you and now we are in a situation where one domino has fallen.
I know what you are saying but Spurs was the tougher game, and it was on a Tuesday. Sane was well rested. SO was KDB. There's no justification at all for not playing them.