If the problem is a long term, structural failure requiring different playing staff and maybe managerial staff nothing can be done before summer. Many fans, including me have become increasingly alarmed by a failure to carry out certain basic elements of the game, especially against teams who don't concede early goals. The problem appears to reflect what goes on, or maybe more what doesn't go on, on the training ground, but, of course, I don't know that.
When Pellers came to the club we were told to expect high risk football and last season this appeared to mean exciting games with a lot of goals. Far from being a waste of money many of the signings seemed unqualified successes: Fernandinho seemed the answer to our problems of "transition", Negredo scored almost every time he put his boots on and Navas gave us real penetration. We warmed up with 7 against a hapless Norwich side, we treated Spurs to 6 and Arsenal were stuffed when we stuck six past them. We were good enough to win two trophies. There were problems in central defence and central midfield for the first 3 months of the season but by November these appeared to have been solved and most of the time we were unstoppable.
This season we are playing high risk football of a wholly different kind. We still play the offside trap, we still play a high defensive line but we don't seem to want to put too much pressure on the ball. We don't seem to notice when opponents get behind our midfield and our back four are overrun and overwhelmed. Today this didn't actually lead directly to either of Liverpool's goals, but it led to both of Barcelona's on Tuesday. Barcelona are a great side and such a lack of attention to such major detail will lead to disaster ten times out of ten. Against Liverpool we paid for getting four players round the ball but none pressuring Coutinho, so he had plenty of time to aim and fire. We have seen Stoke, Newcastle et al show that you don't always have to be in Barcelona's class to profit from City's failings. On other occasions we had some players scampering back but not others and there seemed to be uncertainty about who should be where. On more than one occasion our players nearly ran into each other, going for, but not getting, the ball. The defensive line has to be rehearsed endlessly,, pressing is a team activity which needs ours of paractice to perfect and going forward and getting back into defensive formation is the same. At Barcelona Guardiola had the team drilled to get int defensive/ball winning formation within seconds of losing the ball. Today we let Liverpool run through our midfield at will: on Tuesday we let Barcelona destroy us. I suspect much of the answer to our problems lies on the training ground and begins with a few sharp reminders that teams have to play without the ball as well as with it. We still have eleven PL matches to play and we need every point we can get.
I think our squad can be strengthened in the summer and will probably have to be, but for the PL I think it is more than good enough. We must defend as a team though , and at the moment Pellegrini's defence of two pretty shabby performances has stopped sounding like the cool voice of calm and reason and more like the complacent voice of stubborn inflexibility.
