What Is lacking?

[alexmcity]

What's lacking? 3 wins from the quadruple. Just 3 wins.

Maybe people are right that Pep's tinkering more than necessary, but they overrate our performances vs PSG: could easily have been 2 down in the first 30 minutes in Paris, and could easily be losing 1:2 at half time in Manchester. Dias was voted MOTM for a reason: he had a lot to do despite PSG playing without Mbappe! The assumption that we just needed to play in the final the team vs PSG doesn't take into account that Chelsea play with a very different system and that we weren't impeccable vs PSG in the first place.

Think the team lost form to an extent after the heroic run of 21 wins in a row, and that was natural. Rodri, Cancelo, Bernie, Gundo, Stones, even Dias were generally better between December and March, than in April and especially May. The brutal fixture congestion weared us down ultimately, more mentally than physically. That we were big favourites in the final didn't help to calm our nerves either.

Even if we get both Kane and Grealish, it's far from guaranteed that we will have a better season. We will lose quality players (Laporte, Jesus...) and may get injuries to other players. Perfection is hard to achieve. Winning 2 trophies on average every year should be enough to make us happy.

 

[uwe rosler 28]

Players? Mentality? Leadership? Quality In Key Areas? All Of The Above?

Basically, can this be sorted with new players or does this go deeper and is it more of a mentality issue? If so, how do we move forward and sort this?

Not much really all little details the final could have easily gone our way like it did Chelsea's. But I would say we need a plan b up top someone we can lump it into when r chasing the game apart from that its installing that concentration in your team for 95 mins every game and as good as some of our players are I do feel this is our biggest Achilles heel.

 

[Cobwebcat]

Probably only Chelsea in World Football would not want to swap their season for ours and thats close.

I’d have played Fern instead of Sterling but we might still have lost. Pep made the change for a reason it’s just that we don’t know it Or can’t understand it.

Imagine if Werner could shoot the mistake then would have been picking Stones over Laporte.

I hope the experience of playing in the final calms us down a bit. The pressure on the players coming from the club in the CL seems too much for some.

If Chelsea has kept Lampard we would have won everything. Fine margins.

 

[BluechesterCity]

Often we play with two very wide wingers to stretch the opponents defence yet so often these players, when they do get the ball, have very few team mates around them. I've been seeing it a lot under Pep, especially Mahrez and Bernardo - Silva will play the ball to Mahrez and then run away from the winger towards the penalty area, leaving Mahrez with either a difficult one-on-one or even double marked, and forced to roll the ball back to Walker. Even when a runner goes beyond the defender for a return ball sometimes the man on the ball ignores the run and recycles the ball back into midfield. This happens a lot. And does happen on the left as well.

Makes me think of Mancini and even Pellegrini when we used to have at least 3 players supporting movement down the flanks instead of players queuing up across the penalty area. Less balls going back to defence and being recycled across the centre backs. I'm struggling to remember our last tap in from a ball played across goal from a winger, something we used to score a lot of goals from.

Also, we often see up to four of our players line up across the attacking line and not offering up an extra man in midfield, as in, not dropping deeper to help fashion an attack. This results in a lot more sideways ball shuffling and nothing really threatening the other team.

Another thing I don't like is that we have attackers peeling off their defensive marker to run in behind and rarely do we see a ball over the top. Something that happens a hell of a lot across a season. We saw in our 3 losing games against Chelsea how quickly they shifted the ball and made an aggressive ball forward. Why isn't this something we can do? Instead of the possession based football that helps the other team regain their defensive shape whilst we make 50 passes?

Just a few thoughts.

EDIT/UPDATE: Parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 are available with Kindle on Amazon. LOL! (Didn't realise how long my post was!)

 

[GaudinoMotors]

Often we play with two very wide wingers to stretch the opponents defence yet so often these players, when they do get the ball, have very few team mates around them. I've been seeing it a lot under Pep, especially Mahrez and Bernardo - Silva will play the ball to Mahrez and then run away from the winger towards the penalty area, leaving Mahrez with either a difficult one-on-one or even double marked, and forced to roll the ball back to Walker. Even when a runner goes beyond the defender for a return ball sometimes the man on the ball ignores the run and recycles the ball back into midfield. This happens a lot. And does happen on the left as well.

Makes me think of Mancini and even Pellegrini when we used to have at least 3 players supporting movement down the flanks instead of players queuing up across the penalty area. Less balls going back to defence and being recycled across the centre backs. I'm struggling to remember our last tap in from a ball played across goal from a winger, something we used to score a lot of goals from.

Also, we often see up to four of our players line up across the attacking line and not offering up an extra man in midfield, as in, not dropping deeper to help fashion an attack. This results in a lot more sideways ball shuffling and nothing really threatening the other team.

Another thing I don't like is that we have attackers peeling off their defensive marker to run in behind and rarely do we see a ball over the top. Something that happens a hell of a lot across a season. We saw in our 3 losing games against Chelsea how quickly they shifted the ball and made an aggressive ball forward. Why isn't this something we can do? Instead of the possession based football that helps the other team regain their defensive shape whilst we make 50 passes?

Just a few thoughts.

EDIT/UPDATE: Parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 are available with Kindle on Amazon. LOL! (Didn't realise how long my post was!)

I'm struggling with Part 1.

 

[trevorriley]

only 3 games away from 4 trophies, true. Fantastic season and run of games that won us the league, take a season like that all day long.

We have had several games in the league where we have not played well and been out done by the same tactics from opposition. Rags, chelsea and Leeds prime examples.

To get beat off chelsea 3 teams in a short period shows a lack of preparation. In particular what we did in the final.

We lack up'ing our game for the big games, other teams step up a level on the big day.

 

[wolviedinho]

No more cules for a start. Pep needs to stop treating us like a tribute act to Barca for a start.

New forward and midfielder will do for me. Maybe then we can stop team running through our slow midfield at ease.

 

[gloryhuntersince85]

What's lacking? 3 wins from the quadruple. Just 3 wins.

Maybe people are right that Pep's tinkering more than necessary, but they overrate our performances vs PSG: could easily have been 2 down in the first 30 minutes in Paris, and could easily be losing 1:2 at half time in Manchester. Dias was voted MOTM for a reason: he had a lot to do despite PSG playing without Mbappe! The assumption that we just needed to play in the final the team vs PSG doesn't take into account that Chelsea play with a very different system and that we weren't impeccable vs PSG in the first place.

Think the team lost form to an extent after the heroic run of 21 wins in a row, and that was natural. Rodri, Cancelo, Bernie, Gundo, Stones, even Dias were generally better between December and March, than in April and especially May. The brutal fixture congestion weared us down ultimately, more mentally than physically. That we were big favourites in the final didn't help to calm our nerves either.

Even if we get both Kane and Grealish, it's far from guaranteed that we will have a better season. We will lose quality players (Laporte, Jesus...) and may get injuries to other players. Perfection is hard to achieve. Winning 2 trophies on average every year should be enough to make us happy.

that does put things into perspective we were 3 wins from winning a quadruple.

 

[BluechesterCity]

I'm struggling with Part 1.

The audio book read by Liam Gallagher will be very good, mate!

 

[JGL07]

The only change to the lineup for the final that could have been made was Fernandinho in for Sterling and Gundogan playing more advanced.

I remain convinced that with that referee, Fernandinho would have been sent off by half time. A booking for his first tackle and a second yellow and a red for his next one.