We are not mentally weak

BillyShears said:
Haha ... so true. I think the rush to need to blame/castigate/belittle after any and every defeat speaks to an underlying weakness in certain segments of the forum based support. A weak mentality which leads to an inability to see things rationally or to have any sensible perspective on things. It's been one long cringe reading the individual player threads and the match day thread since Saturday afternoon because of this. Hopefully as the week passes the weak will find other things to distract them.
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True, but judging from some of the threads after the Palace game, it works the other way as well.
 
May not be weak mentally but there is mentality issues, whether that be over-confidence, lack of confidence, heightened sense of importance, whatever. This is prevelant more in certain players over the squad as a whole maybe barring Europe where something seems to affect the group as a whole, possibly more to do with tactics there though.
 
Of course we are not mentality weak but the team can be complacent and prone to lapses in concentration and wasteful.
 
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mancity1 said:
You can put any name you wish to a side that when its behind gets nothing from a game and lacks the ability to dig out a result.

When we have been behind at half time in our past 12 games our record is 0-1-11.

This season we have blown leads against very average sides in Juventus and Spurs.

I do agree the massive injury list ( what resources are we putting into player management FFS ) has unbalanced us and Saturday was one big cock up starting from the management team down after we took the lead but overall our management team and the playing group lack steel and this combined with the injuries will derail this season unless we get smarter on match days and lift our intensity over 90 minutes.
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Juve, very average?, , I thought they came very close to winning the champs league last season.
 
KippaxCitizen said:
Arsenal don't put up sustained title challenges because Wenger refuses to buy a top class defensive midfielder and a top class striker. Vidal was there to be bought this Summer and so was Edin and Lacazette if the right money came along and he bought in nobody and again they will not put up a proper challenge for the title this season because of it.

We do have excellent defensive mids and striker, but we never look comfortable having a lead in the title race and we play like we don't belong in the CL, like we're just some back door club who are inferior to the teams we play.
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we played like we were superior to juventus, who were in the final last year.
 
Haven't got time for a detailed perusal of this thread but I would say that any team that wins two titles in 4 seasons is not mentally weak; however any team that has the best squad over the course of the same period and only wins 2 titles also has some question marks against it. You can question what management have done but you should also question what the players have done and whether or not greater mental fortitude (or however you wish to describe it) might have produced more silverware in the period?

The manager said last week that his team played too fast in losing to West Ham and he has a point. He also acknowledged that it is difficult not to get over anxious etc when you are chasing the game; this is where you need that real mental strength to keep playing your normal game. Just how confident are people when City go behind that they will end up winning the match in question? Isn't there some stat about not winning a Premier League from a losing HT position since 1995?
 
This whole claim of "mental" frailty is a development of the "City will never...." theme of attack pioneered by a rag bag assortment of rags, gooners scousers and their associates in 2008. It has survived like an orphan in the storm, to be joined by the "City will never be as big in Asia as United or Liverpool." Some of our supporters fall for it because it gives an explanation of defeats which comforts them with the belief that City only ever lose because of a moral weakness, never because they're human and have a bad day, as on Saturday. In fact City are exhorted by fans to "dig in" in tough games when one up - ignoring City's ability to stick 6 in "in tough games when one up" instead. Secretly many in the press and elsewhere believe this is the magic of Mourinho's approach - the "Mourinho Masterclass" of getting one up, then putting on a DM to play in front of the DM, waste time, feign injury and hang on for a 1-0. The trouble is this isn't mental strength. It's mental weakness, and it doesn't work. In the run in of 2014 Mourinho masterclasses fell by the wayside as the going got tougher - Chelsea couldn't nick the all important goal and their opponents either "hung on" themselves or even (as at Villa) got the winner. Rather than "dig in" City stuck 4 past Villa after 3 at Goodison. Who had the mental strength then. If City have a problem, it's too many injuries not too little mental strength.
 
There is few things to this whole debate. One thing to say is the amount of times were behind relative to other sides I think is smaller so there are less games to compare results with but conversely if we're not behind as much as other teams you could say that our players aren't as experienced as other sides at trying to recover from a losing positions.

I'm not sure if our players could be described as mentally weak but sometimes the team reminds me of the depressed artist from "the Fast Show", painting lovely pictures until there's a mention of black and everything falls apart, with City when we concede we suddenly look vulnerable and things come apart. This isn't just this season as it happened many times last year (we blew 2 goal leads countless times). I honestly don't know what this is a symptom of but it would be nice if we could eliminate it from our performances.
 
I'd say that this team is mentally weak and has underachieved so far.

There's a strong case to be made that Hart, Zabba, Kompany, Yaya, Silva and Kun are all in the top 5 best players in the world in their positions. That's a world class spine who have played together for many seasons and we have yet to get past the last 16 in the CL.

On top of that, if you analyse both our recent title wins, we seemed to perform the best when we were the underdog or the pressure was off us. There were times in them seasons where we had the opportunity to dominate the division but did not take it.

Some people will say that a league win is a league win and it doesn't matter how you do it. However, if you look through at list of squads that have won the PL you would be hard pressed to find a team that is a lot better than ours. Yet the likes of United, Arsenal and Chelsea have all walked league titles.

To me that is down to having a ruthless mentality.
 
BluessinceHydeRoad said:
This whole claim of "mental" frailty is a development of the "City will never...." theme of attack pioneered by a rag bag assortment of rags, gooners scousers and their associates in 2008. It has survived like an orphan in the storm, to be joined by the "City will never be as big in Asia as United or Liverpool." Some of our supporters fall for it because it gives an explanation of defeats which comforts them with the belief that City only ever lose because of a moral weakness, never because they're human and have a bad day, as on Saturday. In fact City are exhorted by fans to "dig in" in tough games when one up - ignoring City's ability to stick 6 in "in tough games when one up" instead. Secretly many in the press and elsewhere believe this is the magic of Mourinho's approach - the "Mourinho Masterclass" of getting one up, then putting on a DM to play in front of the DM, waste time, feign injury and hang on for a 1-0. The trouble is this isn't mental strength. It's mental weakness, and it doesn't work. In the run in of 2014 Mourinho masterclasses fell by the wayside as the going got tougher - Chelsea couldn't nick the all important goal and their opponents either "hung on" themselves or even (as at Villa) got the winner. Rather than "dig in" City stuck 4 past Villa after 3 at Goodison. Who had the mental strength then. If City have a problem, it's too many injuries not too little mental strength.
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I think I'll give up posting for the moment as @BluessinceHydeRoad posts are far more intelligent and reasoned than anything I can come up with. Once again top post.
 
BillyShears said:
Haha ... so true. I think the rush to need to blame/castigate/belittle after any and every defeat speaks to an underlying weakness in certain segments of the forum based support. A weak mentality which leads to an inability to see things rationally or to have any sensible perspective on things. It's been one long cringe reading the individual player threads and the match day thread since Saturday afternoon because of this. Hopefully as the week passes the weak will find other things to distract them.
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Such a general statement.

After we lost to West Ham I said, hands up we've played worse and won easily just one of those days.

Saturday wasn't one of those days, we displayed a weak mentality on Saturday.
 
BluessinceHydeRoad said:
This whole claim of "mental" frailty is a development of the "City will never...." theme of attack pioneered by a rag bag assortment of rags, gooners scousers and their associates in 2008. It has survived like an orphan in the storm, to be joined by the "City will never be as big in Asia as United or Liverpool." Some of our supporters fall for it because it gives an explanation of defeats which comforts them with the belief that City only ever lose because of a moral weakness, never because they're human and have a bad day, as on Saturday. In fact City are exhorted by fans to "dig in" in tough games when one up - ignoring City's ability to stick 6 in "in tough games when one up" instead. Secretly many in the press and elsewhere believe this is the magic of Mourinho's approach - the "Mourinho Masterclass" of getting one up, then putting on a DM to play in front of the DM, waste time, feign injury and hang on for a 1-0. The trouble is this isn't mental strength. It's mental weakness, and it doesn't work. In the run in of 2014 Mourinho masterclasses fell by the wayside as the going got tougher - Chelsea couldn't nick the all important goal and their opponents either "hung on" themselves or even (as at Villa) got the winner. Rather than "dig in" City stuck 4 past Villa after 3 at Goodison. Who had the mental strength then. If City have a problem, it's too many injuries not too little mental strength.
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Great post or posts as always. Reading an intelligent post on here is very few and far between ;-)
 
daztrueblue91 said:
I'd say that this team is mentally weak and has underachieved so far.

There's a strong case to be made that Hart, Zabba, Kompany, Yaya, Silva and Kun are all in the top 5 best players in the world in their positions. That's a world class spine who have played together for many seasons and we have yet to get past the last 16 in the CL.

On top of that, if you analyse both our recent title wins, we seemed to perform the best when we were the underdog or the pressure was off us. There were times in them seasons where we had the opportunity to dominate the division but did not take it.

Some people will say that a league win is a league win and it doesn't matter how you do it. However, if you look through at list of squads that have won the PL you would be hard pressed to find a team that is a lot better than ours. Yet the likes of United, Arsenal and Chelsea have all walked league titles.

To me that is down to having a ruthless mentality.
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Agree.
 
When Toure went off on Saturday, he took the armband and gave it to Kolarov. I could understand that, as Kompany, Kolarov, and Zabaleta have all been skipper. However, I did wonder who would have assumed responsibility had Kolarov not been there. I guess I look around the current team- those uninjured- and think who amongst them has the necessary leadership qualities to lead the rest back into a game where we're in the mire.
 
B\connellblue said:
How anyone can direct this accusation at a team that that has won 2 of the closest titles in the history of association football is unreal. That the accusation is coming from our own fans is all the more annoying. Stop listening to the media propaganda and get behind your team .
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I disagree. We are not mentally weak overall, but we do seem to have a mental block when things
go against us or don't go our way. Sometimes it looks like we are sulking.
 
BillyShears said:
By that you mean that after a hard fought victory on a City forum City supporters come to talk about how proud they are of their team and how well they felt their team played?
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No those opinions were fine. It was the threads along the likes of "What's the earliest the Premier League has ever been won?" that are now being ridiculed by fans of other clubs.
I actually agree with you regarding the knee-jerk mentality, but let's not kid ourselves that some fans didn't get carried away, after the Palace game.
 
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