Match Report v Man City

Obviously a couple of shots would have been nice....! [ and maybe the ref could have been nice enough to award the few free kicks we should have had, that could have created the chance of something ]. But seeing people moaning endlessly about getting tonked by teams like this and wishing we could stand up to them occasionally....its a bit sad to see people so depressed when we actually did do that! With the players missing, we did brilliantly defensively, as a team.
 
I totally disagree. It’s more proof we can’t play anything other than 4-4-2. Yes, we came up with a plan b ....and in the process had 18% possession and became the first premier league side to never have one shot at home and lost. Think how many premier league games there have been where people have been heavily beaten since 1992. Think back to that Derby side that got 11 points or that Swindon side. But we were the only side to never have a shot. That’s shameful. Yet you herald it? Incredible.

That’s not an effective plan b to anyone other than an absolute blinkered devotee.

West Ham went to the Etihad on Wednesday and got beat 1-0. City have just had a monstrous run of fixtures and an extra time cup final. On their own admittance they are leggy.

I understand why we did it but I never want to see us do it again. Totally agree with Top Farrier.
Really enjoy your reports Neil but sometimes you go off on one and if you re-read the above with your blinkers off you might see it.

Pep is quoted as saying "[It was] an incredible performance - one of the best performances we've ever played". They were remarkable and the absolute opposite of leggy. Their technical level was phenomenal but their ball retrieval was probably the best I've ever seen. Throw in our understandable caution, our visible lack of confidence and, when we did overcome all of these, Kevin Friend, you've got your real context.

Careful with your blind spot Neil, I'll stick with Eddie and Pep's views on this one.
 
Really enjoy your reports Neil but sometimes you go off on one and if you re-read the above with your blinkers off you might see it.

Pep is quoted as saying "[It was] an incredible performance - one of the best performances we've ever played". They were remarkable and the absolute opposite of leggy. Their technical level was phenomenal but their ball retrieval was probably the best I've ever seen. Throw in our understandable caution, our visible lack of confidence and, when we did overcome all of these, Kevin Friend, you've got your real context.

Careful with your blind spot Neil, I'll stick with Eddie and Pep's views on this one.

Read my report again and tell me I’ve gone off on one!

I have said in the report I understand why we did what we did, it was the correct thing to do and it did the job. Is that going off on one?! Blimey.

What I said was, my personal view is we are better off attacking a bit more at home and I hope we don’t do it again. I understand the context after the Arsenal game though hence those comments.

What I have done since is respond to people pointing out how brilliantly effective it was that it really wasn’t. Any game where you become the first home team not to have an effort on goal in 15, 20, 30 or how ever many years DJ is allowing me to have can not be described as effective. Did we go in their penalty area in open play with the ball? It was an overall very ineffective display in terms of all round football with great defensive concentration. That defensive concentration was only good because all eleven men stayed behind the ball making a goal on the break (which is the reason for defensive football) an impossibility.

So I’m happy to take a horses for courses attempt to keep morale but to claim it was effective as a football system is ludicrous.
 
Worst MOTD ...EVER..for me.......to watch bloody Saints take it to Man U at OT...ok they lost thankfully...but a brillaint stab at it......

What a very strange comment even for you. We were not playing United yesterday, we were playing City? When we played United we had 18 shots, 7 on target. Im guessing you actually know we were playing City not united as the matches were the same time?

When Saints had City at home they conceded 3.

I dont see how them losing to United has anything at all to do with us playing City?

Weird Bill
 
What a very strange comment even for you. We were not playing United yesterday, we were playing City? When we played United we had 18 shots, 7 on target. Im guessing you actually know we were playing City not united as the matches were the same time?

When Saints had City at home they conceded 3.

I dont see how them losing to United has anything at all to do with us playing City.

Weird Bill

No! Ha! ....YOU Druss are the Weird one. Your lack of ability to interpret anything that is not conforming to the World as You see it!
I was referring to how Saints went for it at OT compared to how we didnt go for it at DC....Just simply that! What is weird about that? Generally we have been the opposite of that and how Saints play...but Yesterday was an exception!

When I first came on this Forum.....I decided to make my contributions somewhat of an Act because I quickly realised that You and about 4 or 5 others have this Lofty Perch Persona... sort of untouchable ' Legends' .
Much of my content is Wind Up stuff, alternate and edgy for that precise reason!
 
One head down mindless run by Mousset into their centre halves was us going for it in the last fifteen....
Agree had to avoid another hammering - It would have been an interesting reaction to say the least from the home crowd !
As awful as the ref was first half he saw Fraser and King both fall over trying to win dodgy free kicks and he wasn’t going to have it - perhaps if they’d tried retaining the ball and staying on their feet instead ?
Our record since October is 4 wins 2 draws and 14 defeats - which is desperately poor - agree Neil now we have the allegedly “ run of winnable games “ coming up its time for the management and players to sort it out and finish the season well .

Excluding top 6 since October, we won 3 drawn 2 and lost 5 despite being decimated with injuries. Funny what you can do with stats.
 
No! Ha! ....YOU Druss are the Weird one. Your lack of ability to interpret anything that is not conforming to the World as You see it!
I was referring to how Saints went for it at OT compared to how we didnt go for it at DC....Just simply that! What is weird about that? Generally we have been the opposite of that and how Saints play...but Yesterday was an exception!

When I first came on this Forum.....I decided to make my contributions somewhat of an Act because I quickly realised that You and about 4 or 5 others have this Lofty Perch Persona... sort of untouchable ' Legends' .
Much of my content is Wind Up stuff, alternate and edgy for that precise reason!

I noticed that. Wind them in and wind them up. Otherwise everything will end up entangled.
 
No! Ha! ....YOU Druss are the Weird one. Your lack of ability to interpret anything that is not conforming to the World as You see it!
I was referring to how Saints went for it at OT compared to how we didnt go for it at DC....Just simply that! What is weird about that? Generally we have been the opposite of that and how Saints play...but Yesterday was an exception!

When I first came on this Forum.....I decided to make my contributions somewhat of an Act because I quickly realised that You and about 4 or 5 others have this Lofty Perch Persona... sort of untouchable ' Legends' .
Much of my content is Wind Up stuff, alternate and edgy for that precise reason!

Yes yes your mindless rants at 2 in the morning are purely an act. *Yawn*
 
Neil is spot in highlighting yesterdays game as a reason why we shouldn't fear relegation...my biggest fear when we came into this league is that we would become just another bottom half team desperately trying to keep the score down against these elite teams....yesterday we became one of those teams.....personally i never feel any shame in getting thumped 5-1 or whatever if we try our best and are just beaten by a much better side as we were on Wednesday...thats what sport is about .....yesterday i felt shame....i never wanted us to become one of those 'we only got beat 1-0 teams'....it may have only been 1-0 but in many ways it was our biggest defeat since we've been in this league.....total surrender.

This is b*llocks. Try travelling to watch the worst defensive shambles in years before watching them put in a massive shift to blunt the best attacking side in the league days later whilst being decimated by injuries. They nearly pulled it off too!

It's nice that you are blasé about getting smashed every week but there are more important things that avoiding your weirdo sense of shame - namely returning some confidence to our defence going into the easier run of games.

Biggest defeat since we've been in this league? Pull yourself together.
 
I totally disagree. It’s more proof we can’t play anything other than 4-4-2. Yes, we came up with a plan b ....and in the process had 18% possession and became the first premier league side to never have one shot at home and lost. Think how many premier league games there have been where people have been heavily beaten since 1992. Think back to that Derby side that got 11 points or that Swindon side. But we were the only side to never have a shot. That’s shameful. Yet you herald it? Incredible.

That’s not an effective plan b to anyone other than an absolute blinkered devotee.

West Ham went to the Etihad on Wednesday and got beat 1-0. City have just had a monstrous run of fixtures and an extra time cup final. On their own admittance they are leggy.

I understand why we did it but I never want to see us do it again. Totally agree with Top Farrier.

Who cares about the stats? We played well but struggled to catch them on the break like we were able to do against Chelsea.. because City were brilliant. Even then we still managed to keep in the game all the way until the end.

It was the right set up and tactics - we did one part right (pretty much) yet weren't able to execute the second part of the plan well enough. Do the same against spurs and we could turn them over.
 
Well we enjoyed the match and performance yesterday but we're not football purists or tactical connoisseurs. We go, as we all ways have, to see our lads give their all, try their best and hopefully outscore the other team, no matter what division we're in. The fact we didn't muster one attempt on goal, goes down to Eddie's tactics and the sheer quality of the opposition. After Wednesday, I can understand the defensive tactics for virtually the whole match, Eddie didn't want a double tonking in 4 days or concede goals in clumps.

What was obvious was everyone gave their all, mentally and physically to the cause, it's not going to do them any harm to think they kept the Man City Allstars down to 1 goal and a couple of other chances. Yesterday was Eddie being pragmatic, accepting who was available and who we were playing.

Wednesday, we had droves of our fans leaving early, people on here confessing to walking out before the end and not feeling apologetic about it. Yesterday, hardly anyone left before the end. Normally against the "Big Six", it's game over after an hour and a steady stream of early risers blocking the "Good Lady's" view for the last 15 mins. Our fans stayed behind the team throughout the match, vociferously for the most part, so a lot of them must have appreciated what they saw and thought/hoped we might still nick something right up to the last kick.

It's a paradox/perversity that we came away feeling entertained having lost at home and not had a shot : )
 
"[It was] an incredible performance - one of the best performances we've ever played," said Guardiola.

"We didn't concede one shot on target, we were committed at set-pieces defensively, every time we lost the ball we had three or four guys going to recover the ball.

"It was incredible how well they played today - the way they helped each other was fantastic."

People should understand how difficult it is to attack 11 players [who are defending]. Thanks to the players, they are absolutely incredible.
 
Honestly, its like Neil is implying our actual tactic was to have 0 shots on target. Overall we didn't do enough but it as a good game.

Yesterday has certainly divided opinion !
but you're right, the tactic was obviously to stay in the game and break out a bit more as the game went on which we tried to some extent but to no avail, well marshalled by City's rearguard,
Guardiola was full of praise for the level of their performance and as unenviable as it is, we certainly never set out to have zero shots on goal !
 
It got us 4 goals vs Chelsea....

Except it didnt.

Different formation completely 4-4-1-1 v 5-4-1 and four/Five people broke at pace when we had the ball into Chelsea’s half as opposed to two v City.

Fair enough stick to the principle that not attacking a team at home is the right thing to do but don’t compare it to Chelsea as it’s factually totally incorrect.
 

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