What's the problem(s)?

Ajm1985 said:
At the moment, the biggest issue seems to be fitness & confidence. Pep wants them to press and they can't do it effectively for a whole game. As the press is ineffective, it's easy to bypass the midfield.
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A nasty fucker up front would help enormously with that.
 
Roachy said:
Similar "wait and see" comments were made by posters after last seasons indifferent start. Fans are sceptical at the moment and rightly so. That drubbing from Leicester was shocking, and that's putting it mildly. The teams mindset of 2 seasons ago needs to return. If not, goodbye PL title.
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The PL title was never realistic this season for me. I think we’ve declined too far to compete. Nothing I’ve seen this season makes me think anything will be any different to last season.

It’s not like last season was long ago, it was the other week! This season is literally just a continuation from last season, and we’re playing like it.

I think we’ll be miles behind Liverpool this season. Maybe 12 points, maybe more.

I think the wave of players leaving or coming to their end, to players coming in, over the last few years has left the general quality of our squad at a noticeably lower level than it was from 2017 to 2019.

Our poor finishing, inability to win the ball back up high and too many slow players in midfield is crippling us!
 
We desperately need a good left back, a fast aggressive defensive midfielder and an out and out consistent goalscorer.

Mendy has been a disaster, Rodri not mobile enough, Jesus & Aguero injured and Sterling misses far too many good chances.
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
The main two problems are:

1. No natural finishers up top when Agüero is out. We miss FAR too many chances, FAR too many sitters and FAR too many 1v1s

2. We’ve started (in the last 12 months) sloppily giving the ball away up high FAR too often and the determination to win the ball back is none existent.

The problem isn’t Pep and that he’s been “found out”, because we create the most chances in Europe. We’re creating as many chances as Vilanova’s Barça did, only thing is they put their chances away and outscore this City by a good 20 goals a season and their front three were scoring 35, 35 and 53.

We start getting excited because Sterling scored 30 goals in all comps last season. We should all, and so should he, be extremely disappointed with that! He plays the most minutes in the team and gets the most chances. In a team that creates what we do with the minutes Sterling plays, 30 goals is inadequate. And the big chances he misses (absolute sitter right in front of goal to get us back in the FAC semi against Arsenal, mis-hit wide; open net to make it 2-2 against Lyon, dinked over the bar because he used his wrong foot; 1v1 with the ’keeper to win the game for us yesterday, I can recall one goal he’s scored 1v1 with a ’keeper... to name but a few recent ones) are unforgivable.

You could replace all of our forwards (bar Agüero) with better players and they’d score a fucking shit load for us!

Jesus scuffs every other shot he ever hits, some of the scuffs go in, far too many don’t.

Plus the meek way Mahrez loses the ball is infuriating. I’ve seen slugs with more energy than him.

The problem is not the defence. I repeat; the problem is NOT the defence!

We could play the greatest back four in the history of football but when our front players give the ball away and prance about pretending to make an effort to win it back like they’ve started doing in the last year, any defenders you could name will be left isolated or have balls played in behind them like ours do now, and be shown up.
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Let’s say you are right with those 2 points. I’m not sure how Pep isn’t at least partially to blame but let’s say he isn’t. Who is? Or is it more just a shrug and a hey what you gonna do kind of attitude.

Professional sport usually follows a set procedure, the owner will have expectations for a season in terms of performances and achievements. If these are not met he will ask questions.

Those questions probably to Khaldoon initially will be what happened last year, what’s the problem in Europe? Those losses in the league are not really acceptable with the money invested and the standard of opposition. The Arsenal and Lyon games were very disappointing what gives? Is Pep staying? Are his ideas still working? Are these players we have purchased good enough?

I hope he doesn’t blame Covid and pre season after the fact and bad luck. You can work your way up or down the chain but the answer will be with one or more of them
 
FantasyIreland said:
A nasty fucker up front would help enormously with that.
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Agree with this!

I'm not sure what our strategy is for a fair bit of the game. Last night we had false 9 but it's not Mahrez's cup of tea. Torres works best when people are making runs into the box. It feels a bit more like hoping for magic at the moment
 
I wonder how people manage to calculate so confidently the extent to which our difficulties are NOT related to injuries, covid, etc. but to deep structural problems ranging from Pep becoming old and inadequate to Rodri and Jesus being hopeless to not having a LB.

My guess is they shouldn't be so confident. Why think that the situation now is completely different in a bad way to 16/17 (which was followed by 17/18)?
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
The main two problems are:

1. No natural finishers up top when Agüero is out. We miss FAR too many chances, FAR too many sitters and FAR too many 1v1s

2. We’ve started (in the last 12 months) sloppily giving the ball away up high FAR too often and the determination to win the ball back is none existent

3. We’ve got too many slow midfielders.

The problem isn’t Pep and that he’s been “found out”, because we create the most chances in Europe. We’re creating as many chances as Vilanova’s Barça did, only thing is they put their chances away and outscore this City by a good 20 goals a season and their front three were scoring 35, 35 and 53.

We start getting excited because Sterling scored 30 goals in all comps last season. We should all, and so should he, be extremely disappointed with that! He plays the most minutes in the team and gets the most chances. In a team that creates what we do with the minutes Sterling plays, 30 goals is inadequate. And the big chances he misses (absolute sitter right in front of goal to get us back in the FAC semi against Arsenal, mis-hit wide; open net to make it 2-2 against Lyon, dinked over the bar because he used his wrong foot; 1v1 with the ’keeper to win the game for us yesterday, I can recall one goal he’s scored 1v1 with a ’keeper... to name but a few recent ones) are unforgivable.

You could replace all of our forwards (bar Agüero) with better players and they’d score a fucking shit load for us!

Jesus scuffs every other shot he ever hits, some of the scuffs go in, far too many don’t.

Plus the meek way Mahrez loses the ball is infuriating. I’ve seen slugs with more energy than him.

The problem is not the defence. I repeat; the problem is NOT the defence!

We could play the greatest back four in the history of football but when our front players give the ball away and prance about pretending to make an effort to win it back like they’ve started doing in the last year, as well as the opposition then easily being able to play past or around or bypass Rodri or Gundogan or both of them because they’re so slow; any defenders you could name will be left isolated or have balls played in behind them like ours do now, and be shown up.

All of our problems are ahead of the defence.
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We start getting excited because Sterling scored 30 goals in all comps last season. We should all, and so should he, be extremely disappointed with that!

I think I know what your trying to say and agree with some/most of it but bloody hell, you can’t blame a winger who scored 30 plus goals a season. This lads get criticised whatever he does
 
Gray said:
We desperately need a good left back, a fast aggressive defensive midfielder and an out and out consistent goalscorer.

Mendy has been a disaster, Rodri not mobile enough, Jesus & Aguero injured and Sterling misses far too many good chances.
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Blue moon bingo complete
 
Ajm1985 said:
Agree with this!

I'm not sure what our strategy is for a fair bit of the game. Last night we had false 9 but it's not Mahrez's cup of tea. Torres works best when people are making runs into the box. It feels a bit more like hoping for magic at the moment
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Mahrez or Sterling are not centre forwards,they are too lightweight/poncey and can't hold the ball up.We play with wide men but rarely utilise their abilities,as we don't get bodies in the box,or we piss around with the ball so much that on many occasions we lose possession or the move breaks down.

Football is a simple game,why complicate it?
 
Leicester currently getting schooled by West ham, ffs
 
Blue Hefner said:
Without putting too finer point on it. We are slow and boring
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Just watching the women and it's the same old same old. If yer didn't know any better yer'd think that the City women thought that string ten aimless passes together and yer get a goal. But we only seem to get to pass seven and the fuckin' ball is passed into no-women's-land. I bet there's a shrine in the City changing room to the God Possession. We have the lion's share of the game and then become a sitting duck for the only chance these women opposition teams can muster! And when a pass is on for chance at goal we have a fuckin' shot that leaves yer thinkin' "Pass the fuckin' thing!'
 
Dave Ewing's Back 'eader said:
Just watching the women and it's the same old same old. If yer didn't know any better yer'd think that the City women thought that string ten aimless passes together and yer get a goal. But we only seem to get to pass seven and the fuckin' ball is passed into no-women's-land. I bet there's a shrine in the City changing room to the God Possession. We have the lion's share of the game and then become a sitting duck for the only chance these women opposition teams can muster! And when a pass is on for chance at goal we have a fuckin' shot that leaves yer thinkin' "Pass the fuckin' thing!'
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Sterling has mastered it, get too close to the goal, have time to think about it and neither pass nor shoot, just try an keep turning live travis in 1999 and just as annoying.
 
wattle said:
We start getting excited because Sterling scored 30 goals in all comps last season. We should all, and so should he, be extremely disappointed with that!

I think I know what your trying to say and agree with some/most of it but bloody hell, you can’t blame a winger who scored 30 plus goals a season. This lads get criticised whatever he does
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I’m criticising all of them. Their finishing (and a lot of other final things to finish moves - crossing, passing, through balls etc.) is nowhere near good enough.

Sterling plays the most minutes and has the most chances in the team (which is why I focused more on him, but I did mention the others). A really top class player getting those chances hammers 40+ goals a season home for us with the amount we create.

This isn’t some 90s or 00s Prem team who used to score 80 goals a season, where a player getting 30 goals in all comps looks impressive. This is a team creating more chances than any team ever in English football and as many as the team that created the most ever in football (Valinova’s Barça).

None of them are ruthless enough up top for us (other than Agüero, even he misses chances but he’s a deadly finisher most of the time, just spent too much of his career injured).

While he scores a fair few goals, I’ll tell you what, the one man I wouldn’t want the big final chance of the season to win the Prem or win the Champions League final to fall to would be Sterling.
 
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Stats wise our defensive record isn’t even that bad. 17/18 27 goals conceded in PL. 18/19 was 23 and last season 35. Yet our defence does seem to be our main issues of concern. I’d like to see stats on how many goals we’ve conceded from first shots on target and player mistakes
 
Sterling is not an out and out striker. He's a wide forward and damned good at what he does. Cutting in.
 
As I write West Ham are beating Leicester who in turn put 5 past us.
thats how bad we have become !
 
Blu3m00n91 said:
Stats wise our defensive record isn’t even that bad. 17/18 27 goals conceded in PL. 18/19 was 23 and last season 35. Yet our defence does seem to be our main issues of concern. I’d like to see stats on how many goals we’ve conceded from first shots on target and player mistakes
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Our defence and our defenders are not the problem. I’ve been saying it for 12 months.

A trend started emerging with our forwards about a year ago and it’s become a very very bad habit which you see often from us now...

We start brightly and work a few good moves that get us into some great positions. We might put one of them away but we either fluff a few final balls that would lead to a chance or we miss a few easy chances. They start getting frustrated and either start dribbling down blind alleys because they aren’t relaxed or they start checking back and passing backwards because they lose confidence. Or they start giving the ball away or getting caught in possession because they take too many touches and then not working hard to win it back because they’re both frustrated and lost confidence.

Then the opposition start getting into the game and they can get past Rodri or Gundo or both in midfield because they are slow and it leaves our defenders having to defend running back to their own goal from high up, or isolated on their own too much.

Half of this is down the the forwards’ ability or lack of it; half of it is attitude. They give up too easily. They miss a few chances and their mindset changes. Instead of staying focused and calm they start to fold and divert from the gameplan.

Our defenders will then get shown up and everyone talks about how we need a new centre half, a new left back, another new centre half, a new right back, another new centre half and a new ’keeper... and the forwards and slow midfield barely get a mention and are let off with being the root cause of all our problems!
 
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