Tactics

[clevblue]

Genuine question - I'm not a coach or any kind of football expert, I'm just a fan. It seems to me that teams this season have learned from each other, they are all defending in pretty much the same way, every time we get possession they all fly back to their goalmouth and line up. They put three defenders on our top men, Silva and Sergio or whoever, and block every pass with apparent ease. We only score when one of their team makes an error. They all use basically the same game plan. "hit 'em on the break"

What we have to do is find a way through relying on the skills of our top men, we have been missing our top attackers off and on so we aren't leading the pack. Yet.

Our defnce has been poor all season, with Mangala needing another few games, Dedryck not up to it, Nastasic fecked, and Vincent under pressure as an injured captain only Zabba, Demichelis and Clichy are hitting any kind of mark. (I don't even consider Sagna)

Wouldn't you think that as Pelle was a defender he might know what to do?. I didn't watch yesterday's game because of family stuff but I've watched every game this season so far

Can anyone set me right? Am I seeing things wrong?

[goat]

i like pelle, seems a decent bloke and the players seem to want to play for him but he is pretty limited tactically

lucky you missing yesterday, plan a was get the ball to navas and let him hit a shit cross at the first man, plan b was get the ball to navas and let him hit a shit cross at the first man. credit to pelle for working out it was a bit shit after 70 minutes

i dont think the defending has been that bad tactically, the problem is the players either switching off for a minute or another sloppy mistake that causes massive amounts of shit with the players we have like kompany losing the ball up the pitch and demi having to use all the pace of a 90 year old. if you want the defenders to be able to play you have to accept the risks. going back to a richard dunne hoof is safer but just gives the ball back

personally id bin the 4-2-3-1 that every uses now for a 4-3-2-1, city have no reason to try to use wingers, especially shit ones

                         hart
zab kompany   demi/mengele   clichy/kolo/ bloke from crowd

                fern1   yaya   fern2
               
                     silva  nasri
                         
                         aguero

solid in the middle, silva and nasri have more space between the midfield and back four, yaya can make his one or two runs a game with the two lads holding and everyone keeps out of agueros way

[Ludo]

You're right, absolutely no need for wingers.

The best way to counteract a packed defence is to move. The ball a lot quicker across the pitch, something we managed to do for a while at the start of the second half.

[goat]

worrying you agreeing, although i am right

usual argument about no wingers is " you need to stretch the pitch" but thats bollocks

easier to contain a winger than a player in the middle, show him on to his weak side or double up with the winger and fullback
if he beats the fullback and gets the cross in its only half the job, still need the striker to beat two defenders in the air to get a lower percentage ball
you stretch the other team by spreading your team out more, meaning bigger gaps. do you fancy any player having more space to run behind a yaya breathing out his arse after 20 minutes at a demi thats only slightly quicker than a corpse?

this isnt the 80s or 90s where you get a waddle or ginola crossing to a ferdinand, ferguson or shearer, wingers in the old style are dead

[goat]

You're right, absolutely no need for wingers.

The best way to counteract a packed defence is to move. The ball a lot quicker across the pitch, something we managed to do for a while at the start of the second half.

other than silva i dont think we have the players to be able to play that way long enough to use it

besides the players wanting too much time on the ball the movement isnt clever enough. look at xavi and iniesta few years back, they looked like they were three moves ahead of everyone else


out of interest, how many of you would accept the continental 30 passes to move 10 yards and win 1-0 style instead of the english hoof and run for 90 minutes and lose 4-3?

[Rowley Birkin QC]

I'm not much of a tactician either, but goat raises a good point. If your wingers are not up to it, then for width you might as well play with wing backs - and in Zabaleta (very good), Kolarov (good, aside from the occasional defensive lapse), and Clichy (reasonable) we have players who can fulfil this role. I'm not anti-Navas. He works hard, always tracks back to help defend, and gets himself into the right attacking positions - but oh that final ball into the box is a complete lottery!

Looking at things more generally, like Ludo, I continue to mistrust the pedestrian way we often move the ball around the pitch. Of course no team can sustain high tempo attacking football for the full 90 minutes, but we frequently struggle to maintain such attacking pressure for more than the odd 10 - 15 minutes in either half - and sometimes not at all (until after we've conceded a goal!) There's a disturbing lack of urgency to a lot of our play.

It's not that we're always slow of course. We all know those moments when City suddenly go up a gear or two and carve opponents open, but for me those moments are too infrequent, and the pressure is not sustained for long enough. It's all too 'fits and starts' with us - with too many prolonged intervals of slow tippy-tappy, lateral pass keep-ball going on in between the attacking bits. I know you have to be patient, especially when teams park the bus, but City take patience to a zen like art form. The Arsenal game was typical - two thirds of the possession and more than double our opponent's completed pass rate, yet we still lost 0-2! Conclusion - We simply don't do enough (in an attacking sense) with the ball when we have it. To score goals you have to create chances and in too many games this season (even some of the ones we've managed to win) we're not creating enough, or often enough.

So get the ball in there! Don't be so scared of losing possession or things not coming off. You're never going to hurt an opponent playing keep-ball at the back or across the centre circle.

[Rowley Birkin QC]

out of interest, how many of you would accept the continental 30 passes to move 10 yards and win 1-0 style instead of the english hoof and run for 90 minutes and lose 4-3?

Trouble is - we're not even doing that.

I'd like a happy medium. Not necessarily more "hoof and run" - but I do want to see more running and more graft mixed with the skill and the possession.

[clevblue]

the wingers have been disappointing, Nasri seems better in the centre, Milner would rather be in the centre, Navas plays his game to the best of his ability and hopes for the best without always getting there.

Why not Pelle's famous 4-2-2-2 especially when Bony arrives. Why has Pelle changed his tactics so much?I woud've thought that the four at the front would be able to get past any defence leAVING THEM DIzzy. What we WERE doing was scoring loads of goals and our defenders weren't under so much pressure, is it not as I said and teams have learned from each other how to handle us now and we need to change drastically? Pelle just says we need to work hard

[clevblue]

or am I just a naive old dimcnt

[gavin]

First twenty minutes of the second half Arsenal looked ready to crack. We just need to play like that from the start of games and for at least three of the quarters of the game. Bottom line is I don't believe tactics are playing much of a part. We need to play with vigour and impetus as much as possible but all too often we lack the urgency required. We often start games looking as if we are just waiting to win. We'll wait until the opposition collapse or score. We need to go out to tear the fuckers apart now. Like we did against Arsenal second half. Okay we ended up conceding another and losing but that leads to the other main problem - again not tactical.

We defend all too often like a team of fucking amateurs. Say what you like about Mancini but he knew how to sort a defence to do the basics well. If you can't do it Pellers then bring in a defensive coach. Mind you, professional footballers should not need telling to be ready for a free kick. Yesterday's second goal was an utter disgrace to our defence.

Third big problem, again not tactical. Our corners are total shite. If we could score one in every seven or eight many of our problems would be sorted. I wouldn't bet on us scoring in the next seventy or eighty at the moment.

Don't talk to me about tactics. Talk about basics. Effort, approach, defending and fucking corners.

[Ludo]

Effort, approach, defending, corners = tactics.

[Rowley Birkin QC]

Yes - they are all part of 'tactics'. But I can see what Gavin is saying. Apart from some specific tactical problems (the way we sometimes defend; the way we set up for our corners) there's also an overall style / character to the way City currently play that is perhaps more mental / psychological than tactical - that gives cause for concern.

I'm not so much thinking of the Arsenal game here - but in matches against lesser opponents in the Prem we have played too many "...games looking as if we are just waiting to win" (as Gavin puts it). My impression is we've been pacing ourselves - applying only the minimum effort we thought was needed to knock opponents over. Unfortunately we've sometimes miscalculated the effort required with embarrassing results or scrambled wins that should have been much more comfortable.

This overly 'relaxed' approach to some Premiership games has been a feature of Pellegrini's tenure. This season, to my eyes, it seems more noticeable - perhaps a reflection of our stated desire to prioritise success in the Champions League? Who can tell? But what ever the reason, Pellegrini's City do seem to have taken to heart the old adage that the Premiership is a a marathon - not a sprint.

Quite true of course, but you still have to run in a marathon - not just jog.

[Zabba]

We have been simply found out by opponents who now realise that we play with no urgency or impetus, the build up is more important than end product; getting men in the opponents box and getting the ball in.

What worries me somewhat is we have players who cannot put in a decent corner who keep on getting charged with taking corners, same for set pieces around the box. Why has something not been done to find someone who can put decent and dangerous balls (at pace) into the box from corners and set pieces. At the minute our corners hit the first opponent or are floated high and slow into the box or fired over the box and out for a thrown in for our opponents.

We do need wingers imo but not the ones we have now who just punt a ball towards the box with their eyes closed. Therefore opponents allow us the ball wide knowing it will be wasted.

Defending IS dreadful and by that I mean defending as a team, sometimes we need players on the post and sometimes we need to forget the high line defending against free kicks. We meed to be more varied in our approach and less predictable, but most of all we need player stability with a more constant starting 11 and less meaningless rotation. We also need better subs, subs that bring about a new tactical approach.

We have relied this season on Silva's (and occassionally Nasri) creative genius far too often to get us out of jail and break down stubborn tightly packed defences. Too often we have played sublime in the middle of the park with one touch passing perfection only to eventually get near the opponents box and immediately give the ball away to a defence that has had loads and loads of time to get into a good defensive shape. WTF is wrong with breaking fast and getting men into the opponents box asap now and again; has it gone out of fashion? Do we always have to have 110 intricate passes before getting to the opponents box?

In summary we need to be less predictable and have more variation added to our game.