What Is lacking?

hilts said:
In fairness we threw the fa cup this year and by we I mean Pep. Tiredness wasn't the reason we lost. Pep needs the domestic trophies others don't bother with to keep his rep in tact.
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We did throw the fa cup and that gave Chelsea more confidence last night.
I did think we looked tired/off it last night.
Kev walking round the pitch, Mahrez looked slow, Foden, Gundogan.
Obviously Pep putting them under the cosh right from the off didn’t help either, we were chasing shadows early in the game.
 
A striker, ideally Haaland. If Pep's looking for a wildcard move for next season, Laporte at DM (good on the ball, tall, strong, Spanish). Otherwise, a new pacy DM as others have mentioned.
 
Top class wideman who can beat a defender in a variety of ways so he doesn’t know whether to drop off or get tight

Grealish

Top class centre forward with a perfect first touch who can consistently hit the target

Kane / Haaland
 
Windrush48 said:
Agree with this, I think this season especially we should have played the kids in the league cup. Most seasons the final is in like February, so it can be won and then the team can focus on Prem & CL. But not this year.

It’s so difficult though, we had three weeks rest leading up to last night, whereas Chelsea had basically 5 finals in those three weeks (to secure top-4 and the FA Cup)... which was better preparation for last night? The rest or a string of important games? If you’d asked me yesterday I’d have definitely said three weeks to chill, but now I’m not so sure.
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Them beating us twice at the end of the season didn’t help either.
We hardly put up a fight in them 2 games and then last night we started the game with one hand tied behind our backs by not starting a defensive midfielder.
Madness.
 
Pam said:
It's weird because in the days leading up to the game, discussions about whether to start Dhino or Rodri was the dominant topic of conversation. Maybe Pep couldn't resist chucking a curve ball at that very issue. Love him dearly but his biggest flaw is his tendency to take unnecessary risks in one-off games.
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I’ll tell you another thing aswell anyone who thinks the owners will be ok with what happened last are living in fantasy land . Pep will never get sacked and rightly so but there will definitely be a conversation at board level as to why and what went wrong . It isn’t about getting beat as Chelsea are a top top outfit and will be up there next season but we gave them a massive bonus with the team sheet and gave a n elite player like Kante free roam in midfield which will only end one way . Luckily for us Chelsea can’t finish of this game would have been over at half time .
 
What is lacking?

1. An in-form Sterling playing in his best position, RW

2. A replacement for Dinho that's as a close as we can get like for like

3. A clinical striker ever since Kun became a permanent sub

4. A pacy left winger to replace Sane, giving us a second option for Phil

5. A pacy left fullback (left footed) that can rotate with Zinchenko

I'm confident we will solve at least two of those points in the summer. The first point is up in the air
 
CL is a trophy where tactical mistakes are punished in an incredible high % of the time.
And thats where Pep is failing pretty much since he took over from Heynckes at Bayern but he aint learning imo.

Its very likely City will win the CL first time with a much lesser manager than Pep.

Chelsea got to three finals, first Avram Grant as caretaker, then Di Matteo with almost zero top level experience winning it now Tuchel within 5 months of training them.
 
I don’t think we’re lacking anything that would have made the difference last night.

We had enough to win the game but Pep went full Pep and it backfired
 
A top class defensive midfielder to replace/rotate with Fernandinho.

It's clear that Pep doesn't rate Rodri.

So, also maybe some new people involved in transfers as who decided to sign an immobile defensive midfielder?
 
argyle said:
A top class defensive midfielder to replace/rotate with Fernandinho.

It's clear that Pep doesn't rate Rodri.

So, also maybe some new people involved in transfers as who decided to sign an immobile defensive midfielder?
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Yeah Rodri has gone from first choice to third in a few weeks.
I said after Brighton that he might have just played his way out of the CL final team.
 
Paul1970 said:
I’ll tell you another thing aswell anyone who thinks the owners will be ok with what happened last are living in fantasy land . Pep will never get sacked and rightly so but there will definitely be a conversation at board level as to why and what went wrong . It isn’t about getting beat as Chelsea are a top top outfit and will be up there next season but we gave them a massive bonus with the team sheet and gave a n elite player like Kante free roam in midfield which will only end one way . Luckily for us Chelsea can’t finish of this game would have been over at half time .
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it was over at half time, in fact it was over at 6.45 when the team was announced
 
Same relentless attitude we were two casual yesterday.

One thing I have noticed about Pep is he doesn’t like being wrong. He should have made changes at half time.

A striker in that game and we win.
 
A number 9, a left back and less over thinking by Pep. If Ferna goes then we could also do with a DM.
 
What we lack is seemingly the confidence to go into games and stamp our authority. We do it 99.9% of the games we play but why not 100?

Fuck knows why Pep decides to change a winning formula at the last min to try and impact something he recognises in the other team.

He grew up with the DNA of playing one way and that's it. At Barca it never changed.

Why here and why now?
 
blueparrot said:
Did it work ,no, but it made sense he knew Chelsea would play a back 5 and 2 holding, even the front 3 dropping deep,he knew they would play on the break , so playing Sterling and Mahrez high and wide to try and stretch their block and create space in the middle for Foden, Bernardo, KDB to operate in with Gundogan feeding made complete sense.
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blueparrot said:
Playing no conventional dm when he knew they would play long balls in the channels by passsing c.m also made sense. Did the changes work obviously they didn’t but let not pretend there wasn’t a plan to it that made some sense.
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Imo, Pep thought that Chelsea's misfiring problems in attack would be enough to outscore them, so a DM in the strict sense of the term wouldn't be necessary. The real challenge was how to break their compact defensive block, Chelsea's main strength since he failed to do so in his last confrontations with Tuchel even if it was with his B-team. Hence Sterling and Mahrez playing wide and no Ferna/Rodri.

As much as I love Pep, I think that Tuchel got into his head and lead him to go all-out and adapt his game to Chelsea instead of playing his own. Pep seems also to underestimate the fact that the players aren't robots that you can re-program on short notice. You can't change your starting XI so drastically, it will unsettle them. You also just can't start a player who's having a torrid season in a CL final and make him one of your most important pieces. His game plan lasted about 5 minutes before Chelsea took control of the game.

Not sure on that take, Fernandinho is the player who always filled in when one of your players made a mistake. Harvertz could score because Mount had all the time in the world to pass through the gap where the DM should've been.

You can experiment and try to find new solutions for your shortcomings, Pep is a master at that and the use of a false 9 for this season (you'll need a striker next season regardless) was a stroke of genius. But you can't afford to do what he did against Chelsea in CL final.
 
Nothing's lacking except self-respect & ambition in your opponents. You're occasionally beaten by clearly inferior teams because 10 defenders in their own third is their best chance - too risky to venture out and try to win the ball high up the pitch. Your problem is you're so good that even the big clubs adopt this rotten plan, forcing you to take all the risks leaving loads of space behind. Watching your defenders try to tease Chelsea out while they refused and slowly retreated into two banks of five was embarrassing for English football.
 
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