Blue Til Death said:We have reached the stage now where 3 points is not good enough, those days are thankfully gone. We need to be dominating teams and we need to have the same level of committment for every game. We have the best squad of players without doubt, the acid test will be how we perform against the top 6 teams, as it stands we are not playing well enough to beat them.
On the plus side I think we will be ok once Pell gets his system running smoothly and the team carry out his instructions instictively rather than having to look to the players beside and in front to check their positioning.
It will come and I honestly believe we will win the PL this season.
BluessinceHydeRoad said:It is an interesting question. Last season Vinnie had two main periods of injury. The first followed the injury which forced him to go off after 20 minutes of the derby in December. The second followed his injury during the 3rd round cup tie at Stoke. After the derby he missed 2 league matches: after Stoke he missed 7 matches (5 in the Pl and 2 in the cup). The bald statistics are that we won 5 of the 9, drew 2 and lost 2. We lost the derby, in which we were 1-0 down when he went off, but we beat Stoke 1-0 when it had been 0-0 when Vinnie went off. Perhaps significant is that after the derby we won at Reading without him but lost at Sunderland, both matches we might have put down as likely victories. After Stoke we went on a nasty little run, taking only 2 points from 9 – draws at QPR (a match we certainly expected to win, though the 0-0 scoreline suggests the attack was the problem rather than defence) and at home to Liverpool (where the meanest defence in the league conceded 2 of only 15 goals let in at home. Half of these were conceded while Vinnie was NOT on the field!) and a defeat at Southampton (3-1 – Vinnie was NOT on the field for 10 of the 19 goals we let in away). The other 4 games without him saw us not concede a single goal, and this included the home win against Chelsea and the win at Villa. It also included comfortable home wins in the cup to Leeds and Barnsley. Ironically, he came back to lose to Everton! It has to be said that he was ever present in the CL and that he played in the cup final.
So, it was certainly awkward last season without the captain, but many of the performances in which we seem to have missed him least (eg Chelsea) saw Nastasic paired with Kolo rather than Lescott, which is interesting. Most of City's “horror shows” in the PL were without Kompany, but in Europe he made little positive difference – he played in the matches with Ajax, in which we conceded all 5 goals (I think?) from set pieces to possibly the smallest team in the group. And we lost the cup final to a straight forward near post corner.
BluessinceHydeRoad said:It is an interesting question. Last season Vinnie had two main periods of injury. The first followed the injury which forced him to go off after 20 minutes of the derby in December. The second followed his injury during the 3rd round cup tie at Stoke. After the derby he missed 2 league matches: after Stoke he missed 7 matches (5 in the Pl and 2 in the cup). The bald statistics are that we won 5 of the 9, drew 2 and lost 2. We lost the derby, in which we were 1-0 down when he went off, but we beat Stoke 1-0 when it had been 0-0 when Vinnie went off. Perhaps significant is that after the derby we won at Reading without him but lost at Sunderland, both matches we might have put down as likely victories. After Stoke we went on a nasty little run, taking only 2 points from 9 – draws at QPR (a match we certainly expected to win, though the 0-0 scoreline suggests the attack was the problem rather than defence) and at home to Liverpool (where the meanest defence in the league conceded 2 of only 15 goals let in at home. Half of these were conceded while Vinnie was NOT on the field!) and a defeat at Southampton (3-1 – Vinnie was NOT on the field for 10 of the 19 goals we let in away). The other 4 games without him saw us not concede a single goal, and this included the home win against Chelsea and the win at Villa. It also included comfortable home wins in the cup to Leeds and Barnsley. Ironically, he came back to lose to Everton! It has to be said that he was ever present in the CL and that he played in the cup final.
So, it was certainly awkward last season without the captain, but many of the performances in which we seem to have missed him least (eg Chelsea) saw Nastasic paired with Kolo rather than Lescott, which is interesting. Most of City's “horror shows” in the PL were without Kompany, but in Europe he made little positive difference – he played in the matches with Ajax, in which we conceded all 5 goals (I think?) from set pieces to possibly the smallest team in the group. And we lost the cup final to a straight forward near post corner.
Blue Til Death said:We have reached the stage now where 3 points is not good enough, those days are thankfully gone. We need to be dominating teams and we need to have the same level of committment for every game. We have the best squad of players without doubt, the acid test will be how we perform against the top 6 teams, as it stands we are not playing well enough to beat them.
On the plus side I think we will be ok once Pell gets his system running smoothly and the team carry out his instructions instictively rather than having to look to the players beside and in front to check their positioning.
It will come and I honestly believe we will win the PL this season.