Manchester City 17/18 discussion | "If you're here for the Champions clap your hands" (#6505)

Now you see I don't get this.

Much like his Barcelona team, because they're so utterly relentless, metronomic and robotic it's almost too perfect. Football is much better imperfect because there's variation. There's never variation in Pep's teams, they always play the same way, produce the same football and get the same result.

Similarly because this happens, there is never a contest which means you're not watching a football match, you're watching a highlights reel.

I truly admire the coaching and the technical skill of the players he gets in, City are a wonderful football team but they are in no way entertaining because the matches are so impossibly one sided.
That's not entirely true.Maybe in the Premier league this season as nobody has found a way to beat his City team in the league yet but teams in Spain and Germany had some success.Also with his teams and style of play your guaranteed goals which everyone enjoys.
 
Lol yes you're good enough that you'll win "most" of those matches, but I've watched plenty of City games this year and the teams that sit back and try to defend a lead always lose. Letting you have the ball easily around the box is suicide, with Silva/De Bruyne and your forwards movement you will break down any defense. The best way to defend against you is keep the ball away. Easier said than done though I'm sure.

Only the teams that have actually carried a bit of a threat going the other way have had half a chance. As mentioned above, Tottenham were more than matching you for 60 minutes or so, but their defending fell apart and gifted you some horrible goals. Even we did the same, only when we actually got some balls and tried pressing you back did we start creating chances.
They really wernt. We absoulutely pummelled Spurs into the ground and the scoreline could of been a lot worse for them.
 
Love how Otamendi is the new talisman at the back. He's really benefiting from playing in a structured system and not having dinosaurs as fullback support. Can finally see why he was the best defender in la liga in his last season.
 
Manc City's 1-0 win against Newcastle actually shows a different facet to this City side, battling and scraping through. When we United use to win tough 1-0 away trips the British media use to bang on cliche about how it was a "performance of Champions'

Pep is showing he can also win ugly ala Jose Mourinho style. It actually bodes well for City in the future (especially in the CL) actually that they have another string to their bow as you can't play Le' Sexy Football 24/7
 
That City are going to win the league has been inevitable for a while now. It’s nice that by the time they lift the trophy we’ll have already gotten over it.

The real issue is that they now have the opportunity to go all in on the Champions League. If anything they might have had too successful a campaign so far and if they go for the treble or quadruple and an unbeaten season in the league, something will have to give. Scheduling makes even the treble close to impossible when you also make a league cup final as they are certain to. The fixture congestion will be barely manageable.
 
Lol yes you're good enough that you'll win "most" of those matches, but I've watched plenty of City games this year and the teams that sit back and try to defend a lead always lose. Letting you have the ball easily around the box is suicide, with Silva/De Bruyne and your forwards movement you will break down any defense. The best way to defend against you is keep the ball away. Easier said than done though I'm sure.

Only the teams that have actually carried a bit of a threat going the other way have had half a chance. As mentioned above, Tottenham were more than matching you for 60 minutes or so, but their defending fell apart and gifted you some horrible goals. Even we did the same, only when we actually got some balls and tried pressing you back did we start creating chances.
Rubbish.
City were all over them with the exception of a spell of about 20 minutes at the start of the second half.
I know, I was there.
 
Rubbish.
City were all over them with the exception of a spell of about 20 minutes at the start of the second half.
I know, I was there.
I watched it too, yes city were on top but Tottenham had plenty of chances themselves, they just had a poor game.

anyway the fact remains sitting off city and letting you do what you want will never work. Teams will more than likely get results by actually getting on the ball and attacking. We saw with Newcastle once they actually tried to attack they nearly scored twice.
 
I watched it too, yes city were on top but Tottenham had plenty of chances themselves, they just had a poor game.

anyway the fact remains sitting off city and letting you do what you want will never work. Teams will more than likely get results by actually getting on the ball and attacking. We saw with Newcastle once they actually tried to attack they nearly scored twice.

They had 2 shots on target, one of them after the result was 4:0. They didn't have clear cut chances at all.
 
Did @didsburydan get banned because he was proven to be an Abu Dhabi employed propaganda machine?
I suspect several people on this board are.

You couldn’t be any more wide of the mark on that one if you tried.

I know Didsbury Dan personally. He actually lives and works in Qatar (I’m sure the mods can clarify this) - and has done for several years - which geographically is roughly the same distance to Abu Dhabi as Manchester is to Amsterdam.

More pertinently, relations between Qatar and Abu Dhabi are currently as frosty as they come, and far from being up Abu Dhabi’s arse (posting facts about City doesn’t in any way constitute this by the way), Didsbury Dan has actually expressed his disdain at Abu Dhabi’s stance in siding with Saudi Arabia against Qatar.

Going off some of the posts on here down the years weirdly supporting the Glazers, I think it’s more likely there are posters linked to United’s owner than City’s, given that real life Glazer apologists amongst United’s support appear to be non-existent outside of the internet - something which @DanClancy has alluded to.
 
Lol yes you're good enough that you'll win "most" of those matches, but I've watched plenty of City games this year and the teams that sit back and try to defend a lead always lose. Letting you have the ball easily around the box is suicide, with Silva/De Bruyne and your forwards movement you will break down any defense. The best way to defend against you is keep the ball away. Easier said than done though I'm sure.

Only the teams that have actually carried a bit of a threat going the other way have had half a chance. As mentioned above, Tottenham were more than matching you for 60 minutes or so, but their defending fell apart and gifted you some horrible goals. Even we did the same, only when we actually got some balls and tried pressing you back did we start creating chances.
To be honest, the teams who've made us sweat the most were Wolves, Huddersfield and Southampton, who all sat deep, defended well, and took advantage of the few chances they had in the match (Wolves was 0-0). Spurs matched us and made us sweat for around fifteen minutes of the second half, but they should have been down to nine men by the time De Bruyne made it 2-0. De Bruyne was only able to make it 2-0 because Spurs left themselves wide open. Someone will eventually find a way of playing against us (which, to my eyes, is basically what Bournemouth did in the first half against us, or Huddersfield did at the Kirklees, where you have a bank of five and a bank of three with the full-backs as deep as they can sit). But as of yet, nobody's found a solution.
 
I truly admire the coaching and the technical skill of the players he gets in, City are a wonderful football team but they are in no way entertaining because the matches are so impossibly one sided.

I will admit there are games i now won't go to this season, as they are going to be glorified training exercises.

A lot of our dominance though is down to the league being generally very poor. You can't expect much from the teams at the lower end of the table as they are working on tiny budgets compared to us. I expected the league to be a dogfight between the top 6. The problem has been that Utd & Chelsea have either had major injuries to very important players when facing us. Liverpool lost Sane at the Etihad. Spurs have been off form for most of the season. Arsenal were on the end of some poor decisions when they faced us.

Everything has gone for us this season. Our opponents have had everything against them. In these kind of conditions you are going to get a 1 sided league.
 
We only need 13 wins to win the league now. 12 if we don't lose the derby. That's mental this side of new year.

So if you win about 33% of the games of an entire season, or 72% of your remaining games, you win the league, after 32/33 games? It's not staggeringly hard to believe.
 
Everything has gone for us this season. Our opponents have had everything against them. In these kind of conditions you are going to get a 1 sided league.

That's true I guess. It doesn't help that a lot of teams seem beat before the game even starts. It's the old self fulfilling prophecy, teams are scared, and just sit deep waiting to concede which they inevitably do before finally deciding to try attacking.

Think best way to beat them is playing two up top and going long, dropping balls onto the full backs and picking up the scraps, not pretty but negates the high press.
 
So if you win about 33% of the games of an entire season, or 72% of your remaining games, you win the league, after 32/33 games? It's not staggeringly hard to believe.

It is though.

Essentially, unless you are arguing that the gap City has at this stage of the season isn’t exceptional- then you should be agreeing with him.
 
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Lol yes you're good enough that you'll win "most" of those matches, but I've watched plenty of City games this year and the teams that sit back and try to defend a lead always lose. Letting you have the ball easily around the box is suicide, with Silva/De Bruyne and your forwards movement you will break down any defense. The best way to defend against you is keep the ball away. Easier said than done though I'm sure.
Would like to see Juventus have a crack at it personally. That's one team who can sit back all day against anyone and never give them an inch

Manc City's 1-0 win against Newcastle actually shows a different facet to this City side, battling and scraping through. When we United use to win tough 1-0 away trips the British media use to bang on cliche about how it was a "performance of Champions'

Pep is showing he can also win ugly ala Jose Mourinho style. It actually bodes well for City in the future (especially in the CL) actually that they have another string to their bow as you can't play Le' Sexy Football 24/7
Yesterday's game could have just as easily finished 10-1. This wasn't scraping through and winning ugly, at all

Also :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: at people who keep talking about the right tactics to beat them. Try this: how about having an outfield player who's better than Ederson with his feet? :lol:
 
I will admit there are games i now won't go to this season, as they are going to be glorified training exercises.

A lot of our dominance though is down to the league being generally very poor. You can't expect much from the teams at the lower end of the table as they are working on tiny budgets compared to us. I expected the league to be a dogfight between the top 6. The problem has been that Utd & Chelsea have either had major injuries to very important players when facing us. Liverpool lost Sane at the Etihad. Spurs have been off form for most of the season. Arsenal were on the end of some poor decisions when they faced us.

Everything has gone for us this season. Our opponents have had everything against them. In these kind of conditions you are going to get a 1 sided league.
Your post history is very telling. Not sure what a red gets out of pretending to be a blue and putting them down in every post. Perhaps Namcos finest creation.

Anyway, any Blue who says they won’t go to games now because we are dominating too much is laughable. You were fine watching it when we scored 11 goals at home all season under Pearce but now it’s all too much? You should get banned for that alone.
 
Here's my two cent, take it with a grain of salt. Yesterday was my first time watching them this season after all the hype.
There possession play and transition is quite good. But most of their player not technical enough to retain the ball properly. This was evident in the span of 20min in the first half when Newcastle pressed quite well, and the city players were giving away possession willy-nilly and had quite a lot of opportunities because of that. Had this argument with my housemate as he's an Arsenal support. that in PL not many teams show coherent pressing, and that too with purpose, this might be the reason for their utter dominance now.
Still, believe if they faced a good team with a good pressing strategy they will not see much of the ball (Napoli comes in mind, but I think they don't have much quality on the ball, hence the result). Their next CL games would be evidence of that.
 
You couldn’t be any more wide of the mark on that one if you tried.

I know Didsbury Dan personally. He actually lives and works in Qatar (I’m sure the mods can clarify this) - and has done for several years - which geographically is roughly the same distance to Abu Dhabi as Manchester is to Amsterdam.

More pertinently, relations between Qatar and Abu Dhabi are currently as frosty as they come, and far from being up Abu Dhabi’s arse (posting facts about City doesn’t in any way constitute this by the way), Didsbury Dan has actually expressed his disdain at Abu Dhabi’s stance in siding with Saudi Arabia against Qatar.

Going off some of the posts on here down the years weirdly supporting the Glazers, I think it’s more likely there are posters linked to United’s owner than City’s, given that real life Glazer apologists amongst United’s support appear to be non-existent outside of the internet - something which @DanClancy has alluded to.
So there are people in real life who spend countless hours defending their football team on a rival forum. Well that is me shocked, then again I still can't believe Facebook and Amazon are worth the same.
 
Your post history is very telling. Not sure what a red gets out of pretending to be a blue and putting them down in every post. Perhaps Namcos finest creation.

Anyway, any Blue who says they won’t go to games now because we are dominating too much is laughable. You were fine watching it when we scored 11 goals at home all season under Pearce but now it’s all too much? You should get banned for that alone.

I’d say it was namco’s shittest creation as this time he’s been sussed in record time!

By the way, I think you’re giving Pearce too much credit - we only scored 10 league goals at home that season:lol:
 
So there are people in real life who spend countless hours defending their football team on a rival forum. Well that is me shocked, then again I still can't believe Facebook and Amazon are worth the same.

I’m not sure what relevance that comment has to what I posted.
 
I will admit there are games i now won't go to this season, as they are going to be glorified training exercises.

A lot of our dominance though is down to the league being generally very poor. You can't expect much from the teams at the lower end of the table as they are working on tiny budgets compared to us. I expected the league to be a dogfight between the top 6. The problem has been that Utd & Chelsea have either had major injuries to very important players when facing us. Liverpool lost Sane at the Etihad. Spurs have been off form for most of the season. Arsenal were on the end of some poor decisions when they faced us.

Everything has gone for us this season. Our opponents have had everything against them. In these kind of conditions you are going to get a 1 sided league.
Lol mate, try a bit fecking harder.
 
Here's my two cent, take it with a grain of salt. Yesterday was my first time watching them this season after all the hype.
There possession play and transition is quite good. But most of their player not technical enough to retain the ball properly. This was evident in the span of 20min in the first half when Newcastle pressed quite well, and the city players were giving away possession willy-nilly and had quite a lot of opportunities because of that. Had this argument with my housemate as he's an Arsenal support. that in PL not many teams show coherent pressing, and that too with purpose, this might be the reason for their utter dominance now.
Still, believe if they faced a good team with a good pressing strategy they will not see much of the ball (Napoli comes in mind, but I think they don't have much quality on the ball, hence the result). Their next CL games would be evidence of that.

You've blatantly never watched them play at all this season then, or last year.
 
So if you win about 33% of the games of an entire season, or 72% of your remaining games, you win the league, after 32/33 games? It's not staggeringly hard to believe.

The point is that is hugely impressive and that is only the case if United win ALL their remaining games. Thats a crazy position for any team to be in before new year.

To put it in perspective, in reality 9 wins from 18 games will see us with 85 points and finish above both United and Chelsea if their second half of the season matches their first, considering many United fans say you are showing a title winning points total so far this season, I'd say that for City its a phenomenal achievement so far.
 
Nice break again while palace play at 8pm tonight. Bizarre organising
 
You've blatantly never watched them play at all this season then, or last year.

Ya, my bad should have been more clear. I haven't watched you guys before the last game in PL. I did watch the Napoli game though.
And the quality I was referring to was quality of individual players to retain or keep the ball. This is my main argument against city. Think, if they are exposed against teams who pressing is very coherent and purposeful, they might not be able to keep possession and will have to rely on counters, which I have again heard they are pretty good at.
 
“The best way to defend is far, far away from your goal.”

How simple and true is that statement? If only more managers thought this way Football would benefit.

It’s also a very flawed statement and only certain teams can do it. The higher up the pitch you are, the more likely teams are at counter-attacking in open space. Of course, letting teams like Leicester swing in crosses at will is also not the best solution.
 
It’s also a very flawed statement and only certain teams can do it. The higher up the pitch you are, the more likely teams are at counter-attacking in open space. Of course, letting teams like Leicester swing in crosses at will is also not the best solution.

Well this is my point. We seem to have absolutely zero game management skills because either our manager is telling them to camp in or the players are just cowards. Neither one is something we can afford to have if we want to get back to the top.
 
you can't blame Pep and City for games being so one sided. blame all the teams that set themselves up so defensively against them.

I wasn't blaming Pep and City, merely stating that they're not entertaining to watch.

Pep's style is incredible really, reduces every match against even the best opponents to absolutely no contest. People bleat on with criticism whenever it's said that he's the best manager ever but in terms of effectiveness he probably is. You simply can't compete with his teams. Every other great manager there's ever been has never had the near complete dominance over 90 minutes of a football match.

it's also incredibly overbearing which makes it hard to watch. I want excitement when I watch a football match, there's never any in a Pep match.
 
It’s also a very flawed statement and only certain teams can do it. The higher up the pitch you are, the more likely teams are at counter-attacking in open space. Of course, letting teams like Leicester swing in crosses at will is also not the best solution.

It's only flawed if you've not thought about the counter attack. Pep doesn't allow the other team to counter attack and his style means players are never far away from the ball meaning even when the opposition gets it they're locked in. It's like being constricted by a snake.
 
I’m not sure what relevance that comment has to what I posted.
You said that you knew him in real life, I said I am shocked someone would spend that much energy and time on a rival forum arguing about City's finances. The Amazon and Facebook part has no relevance yes.
 
You said that you knew him in real life, I said I am shocked someone would spend that much energy and time on a rival forum arguing about City's finances. The Amazon and Facebook part has no relevance yes.
He wasn’t arguing.

He was just correcting fiction and supposition with real facts.

Regarding ‘time and energy’ see my Bored comment in this thread.

It’s sad but reality that some United fans repeat the fictional cliches about City, ad nauseum.
 
Your post history is very telling. Not sure what a red gets out of pretending to be a blue and putting them down in every post. Perhaps Namcos finest creation.

Anyway, any Blue who says they won’t go to games now because we are dominating too much is laughable. You were fine watching it when we scored 11 goals at home all season under Pearce but now it’s all too much? You should get banned for that alone.

Have i missed a meeting? Don't know what the hell a Namco is, is it a Bot or something?

I've come to this forum after being kicked off Bluemoon. This was for having the audacity to say we've had a bit of luck this season.

I wouldn't say i've been derogatory about us since posting on here. I posted about not wanting to sign VVD as his preferred destination was Liverpool. We have made ourselves look stupid by saying we didn't want him anyway. I also posted that there may be something in the Doping claims. Many other members think the same.

Where did i say i liked how we played under Pearce? I will agree our time under him was bad news. On the other hand i don't pay for my ticket to watch a game of attack Vs defence.

I thought the league would be won by the team with the best record in the big 6 Vs games. It's looking like we'll have the best record in this respect. We've not yet been in a game against 1 of these sides though due to mitigating factors. I want us to win the league by beating the best & not just rolling over the cannon fodder.
 
You said that you knew him in real life, I said I am shocked someone would spend that much energy and time on a rival forum arguing about City's finances. The Amazon and Facebook part has no relevance yes.

Ever heard of conversion thoery? The minority in a group can have a disproportionate effect on influencing those in the majority.

It comes as no surprise to discover that practically all of the City posters in this thread appear both knowledgeable and confident in the claim that their clubs recent financial history is perfectly legitimate and without suspicion (breeeeeath). The desired effect is to convert United fans to their belief, earning their club recognition and acknowledgement for their achievements and the fans justification for supporting them in the process. Being in the minority only serves to empower their position. Consistent, confident minority voices are extremely effective.

Blatant conversion theory. They are doing it even if they don't realise it. Plus it's perfectly natural to seek approval from your peers, especially when you yourself doubt the validity of your claim.