The Title Race - 2024/25

[alexmcity]

Give you Rodri but Fernandinho was by far the best in the league at the time. Silva was levels above anyone and Foden never last as an 8. KDB was at the peak of his powers. I don’t think the treble team was better than the team that won the domestic treble. They’ll go down in history and rightly so but for much of that season we were a long way off how we played to win the domestic treble. The scum side that won the treble wasn’t as good a side as the one that won the European cup in 2008 either.

I think many will agree with your point. The domestic treble is a great achievement. But the league cup can't be compared to the CL. We won vs Bayern 3:0 and Real 4:0 to reach the final. This level of dominance vs the best teams in Europe was impossible for the 17-19 team or any English team before. They lost 3 from 4 games vs Spurs and Liverpool in 18 and 19, a bit unlucky maybe, but still not as good as the 22-24 team in the CL. Rodri and Haaland made a difference previous legends couldn't. The 17-19 team were more consistent in the league, but not as good vs the very best.

 

[KingGeorge]

"There isn’t any evidence to support Liverpool as serious title contenders thus far. They finished 9 points off it last year and didn’t add to their squad in a meaningful way while likely downgrading their coaching."

Who says they have downgraded their coaching?

Klopp or the idiots suggesting that a manager than won one PL title out of 9 was the greatest manager that ever lived>?

I'm betting that Slott is an inferior manager to Klopp.

Yes, I think Klopp was an elite manager. I also think Pep is superior to him. The way Pep reacted to him tells me he was a very good manager. Pep has always said facing Klopp's Liverpool teams made us better. That wouldn't be possible if Klopp wasn't a solid manager.

In addition, the track record of managers coming from the Eredivisie to the PL is very poor.

 

[Keeper!]

I'm betting that Slott is an inferior manager to Klopp.

Yes, I think Klopp was an elite manager. I also think Pep is superior to him. The way Pep reacted to him tells me he was a very good manager. Pep has always said facing Klopp's Liverpool teams made us better. That wouldn't be possible if Klopp wasn't a solid manager.

In addition, the track record of managers coming from the Eredivisie to the PL is very poor.

Klopp for me is an elite man manger, but not an elite coach.

 

[youngbob]

Give you Rodri but Fernandinho was by far the best in the league at the time. Silva was levels above anyone and Foden never last as an 8. KDB was at the peak of his powers. I don’t think the treble team was better than the team that won the domestic treble. They’ll go down in history and rightly so but for much of that season we were a long way off how we played to win the domestic treble. The scum side that won the treble wasn’t as good a side as the one that won the European cup in 2008 either.

Agreed. Were it not for VAR's dodgy introduction to the Champions League in 18/19 - allowing Llorente's handball goal to stand when it would have been disallowed if it'd happened just four months later - we'd have definitely done the quadruple that year. We were just locked in from February onwards and would have beaten that Liverpool side in the final. It would have been stressful as fuck but we'd have done it. We had serious grit in defence with Laporte and the balance Pep found by making Mahrez and Sterling inverted wingers, and playing Gundogan slightly deeper next to Fernandinho, with Bernardo more advanced, made us the hardest we've ever been to beat imo.

Ederson
Walker, Kompany, Laporte, Zinchenko
Fernandinho, Gundogan
Mahrez, Bernardo, Sterling
Aguero

What a side that was!

 

[M23 Citizen]

Klopp for me is an elite man manger, but not an elite coach.

I don’t think a manager that got 92, 97 and 99 points in the Prem with one Prem title, who’s won two Bundesliga titles, who’s got to four CL finals winning one, who’s got to thirteen other finals winning nine, with a distinctive and effective quick back-to-front style of attacking play and first+second wave press defensive play can possibly not be an elite coach.

Tactically, some of those games we had with Liverpool are the highest quality football games I’ve ever watched. Especially that 2-1 win at the Etihad. I’ve never seen a team move the ball so quickly and crisply from defence to attack as that Klopp team. That takes a lot of work on the training ground to get that good at it.

Tactically, the best teams we faced before Pep came to City were Pep’s Bayern, Enrique’s Barça and Klopp’s Dortmund.

 

[M23 Citizen]

Agreed. Were it not for VAR's dodgy introduction to the Champions League in 18/19 - allowing Llorente's handball goal to stand when it would have been disallowed if it'd happened just four months later - we'd have definitely done the quadruple that year. We were just locked in from February onwards and would have beaten that Liverpool side in the final. It would have been stressful as fuck but we'd have done it. We had serious grit in defence with Laporte and the balance Pep found by making Mahrez and Sterling inverted wingers, and playing Gundogan slightly deeper next to Fernandinho, with Bernardo more advanced, made us the hardest we've ever been to beat imo.

Ederson
Walker, Kompany, Laporte, Zinchenko
Fernandinho, Gundogan
Mahrez, Bernardo, Sterling
Aguero

What a side that was!

I found Pep’s team selection against Spurs away puzzling. He didn’t start de Bruyne, Kompany or Bernardo (or to a lesser extent Sané), although he did bring on de Bruyne and Sané in the second half.

Fernandinho got injured in February that season and missed 13 of our last 17 games in all competitions. It was Gündoğan and sometimes Bernardo joining him deeper in that run-in (Fernandinho only managed half an hour in the Spurs home game).

We’d have been without Fernandinho for the CL final against Liverpool though as he missed the final four Prem games and the FA Cup final with a knee injury.

de Bruyne missed a lot of the early season with a knee ligament injury but was back from mid-December but did get another hamstring injury in the final four games and would have also missed the CL final (although you didn’t include him).

I liked us best that season when Laporte played left back with Kompany and Stones central. I thought we looked really solid against Liverpool doing that in the home win but we didn’t play it often.

 

[simmo]

Every little helps - just seen they play Real Madrid before the game at Anfield.

 

[69FACUPfinal]

Agreed. Were it not for VAR's dodgy introduction to the Champions League in 18/19 - allowing Llorente's handball goal to stand when it would have been disallowed if it'd happened just four months later - we'd have definitely done the quadruple that year. We were just locked in from February onwards and would have beaten that Liverpool side in the final. It would have been stressful as fuck but we'd have done it. We had serious grit in defence with Laporte and the balance Pep found by making Mahrez and Sterling inverted wingers, and playing Gundogan slightly deeper next to Fernandinho, with Bernardo more advanced, made us the hardest we've ever been to beat imo.

Ederson
Walker, Kompany, Laporte, Zinchenko
Fernandinho, Gundogan
Mahrez, Bernardo, Sterling
Aguero

What a side that was!

I know. How I miss that team.

 

[alexmcity]

Agreed. Were it not for VAR's dodgy introduction to the Champions League in 18/19 - allowing Llorente's handball goal to stand when it would have been disallowed if it'd happened just four months later - we'd have definitely done the quadruple that year.

Reality doesn't work like that, though. Nobody can be sure about outcomes.

It was difficult enough to beat Burnley and Leicester 1:0 without additional CL games and with injuries to important players. Two more CL games around the final PL games might have cost us the PL. And the CL wasn't guaranteed either. The final was vs Liverpool and any notion that the win was 100 % guaranteed would be silly.

The cold truth was we lost vs Spurs in 2019, being very poor in the 1st leg. Compare that tie to the tie vs Bayern in 2023 or the Liverpool tie in 2018 to the tie vs Madrid in 2023 and the gap in quality is pretty obvious. Underestimating the team that decimated all of Liverpool, Arsenal, Bayern and Real in April/May 23 by 3-4 (!) goals is bonkers.

 

[Axel Freed]

The dazzling 20/21 false 9 side that won dozens of games on the bounce was our best ever team and Pep’s best ever team …. the apogee of 50 years of total football.

I’ve never seen football like it, utterly remarkable. Losing a couple of cup games doesn’t detract from the beauty and magnificence of that team