City are too lightweight. Front four of Navas, Silva, Sterling and Aguero is about 40 stone of dribbling around and few bursts of speed and nary a tackle amongst them. When THREE OF THEM are being asked to match up against an aggressive, hunting in packs, midfield FIVE, it just makes the job of F&F impossible. From there, we are ONE THROUGH BALL AWAY from the ubiquitous (and usually quite successful!) offside trap being sprung. It is how they beat us at the Etihad AND Candlefield.
Goal 1: on target shot that somehow found the corner
Goal 2: Milner cutting through defence with Otamendi on vacation chasing Firminho out to their right wing
Goal 3: Vince not holding the offside line and a well timed ball beating the trap
Nothing earth shattering in the goals (other than the good fortune of the first two!), but allowing the back four to be OVERRUN has been our biggest weakness all season.
The teams that are flying are ALL defending from the front and pressing the opposition to send up a 50/50 ball. Klopp simply has his team pressing high, so the keeper/defender has to hoof it (50/50) and then they fight to get the ball turning the 50/50 into a 70/30, and then take it from there. The number of ACTUAL TACKLES we make in a game can be counted on one hand. We nick the occasional ball, intercept our fair charge, but rarely tackle to win the ball, unless it is a last ditch tackle in our last 25 yards. That said, it would be nice to see Otamendi NOT try to tackle quite so recklessly while on his arse. Never seen a player slide so much, with so little positive results. Going to ground SHOULD be the last ditch challenge, not the "I made my mind up when you were 15 yards away, so here I come" kind of tackle!
With a fully fit, up for it, team, we can beat anyone on our day. We are so far from being either fully fit or up for it that it is exacerbating the holes and magnifying the losses of personnel. It has been discussed for the last few seasons, but seems to have been shelved in favor of just labeling us as shit, but we have a VERY OLD SQUAD OF PLAYERS with very few young players able to get a game, because every game is considered vital at the moment. We apparently have genuine 2016/17 first team squad members out on loan right now, with a few others who might be able to make some impact, but the list of what we need is growing every day.
1 reserve keeper (like to see junior keeper promoted as a real backup and stop this "Cup keeper" nonsense)
2 full backs, minimum. Maybe one incoming, one promotion from the ranks..Angelino?
1 centre half, probably Denayer
2 Champions League quality midfielders, minimum.
1 wide player
2 forwards
The players who I don't think will cut the mustard for Pep:
Willy
Zaba
Kolarov
Sagna*
Clichy*(gonna have to keep at least two of them, so I picked 'em!)
Fernando
Nasri*
Yaya
Delph*
Sterling*
Navas
Bony
* Ones I would keep for cover, but it all depends upon squad rules for foreign vs domestic player counts, based on incoming players.