Very very hard, painful watch. We were bang on it in the first half and should have been comfortable with another couple of goals, however their keeper stopped everything. We got a warning when they played a ball from defence between our defenders and the striker brushed off Simpson Pusey, but fluffed his attempt. We didn’t learn from it and they did the same in the 38th min and he scored, he was fortunate as he scuffed his shot and it found its way into the net….
Then we absolutely capitulated. To conceded after 20 seconds from the restart is totally unprofessional and demonstrates a clear lack of concentration, shocking defensively. However, to then conceded a stupid penalty, what appeared to be less than a minute later, when we had possession too, is diabolical. Our defending tonight was not good at all collectively.
Pep dropped a bollock with that back four, those selected all had stinkers, but the high line fucked us. Rico is always going to be pushing on and doesn’t have the pace to recover as we have seen on too many occasions this season. Akanji and Gvardiol played like they’d just been promoted from the youth team, like Simpson Pusey. The poor lad got a roasting, strange choice by Pep to play him in such a game. It was a mistake for sure.
The midfield constantly caught in possession or gave the ball away needlessly, Bernardo and Kovacic can not give us the drive and creativity needed. Neither of them performed well tonight, Phil started well but faded. Our wingers repeatedly wasted opportunities with poor ball into the box or in Savinho’s case, wildly shooting when there were much better options. Erling, started off well, but faded and then that penalty! The keeper had already gone before he struck the ball. Terrible penalty and it could have changed the game.
The only positive was finally seeing Kev back on the pitch. We need to get over Rodri, we won’t see him until next August, we have to get other key players fit and quickly otherwise there will be more of these pastings. The international break can’t come quick enough, but the club MUST put their foot down with players wanting to represent their national teams whilst not being fit for City.
We’re not in a great place at the moment, we are struggling and we look totally disjointed and have done for a few weeks, despite getting wins; but we need to get our mojo back otherwise we may find ourselves in a worse situation.
