City v Barca

[ebm1991]

we keep saying our second half was good but was good because they slowed down a bit with 0-2?

[goat]

I remember quite a lot of "fucks" on here that were quite disappointed he was allowed to leave.

Yes - I can remember muttering darkly on here about if they let De Jong go they'd better have a bloody good replacement lined up!

...and of course, they didn't...

I still maintain that our failure to significantly strengthen our central midfield that summer cost us the defence of our Championship to a very ordinary rag side. The situation was not adequately recovered until we signed Fernandinho.

the version of de jong we had was not that good a player really...compared to his ajax days anyway but he could stop better players than him from playing. fernando is like a fucking turnstile
some fucks given  http://smf.citymancs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26351.0

[Zabba]

OMG how deluded are some on here. Blue Brendan and EBM1991 excepted.

We were well and truly second class to Barca in every position and area of the game. We were played off the park at home first half and lucky to go in at half time only 2 0 down.

Yes indeed second half we played better; but the tie never mind game was over by then and they had eased down and were saving energy. When we scored they stepped it up again and in desperation we ended up with a player getting sent off.

A message to the deluded on here there is more chance of Man Utd winning this years Champion League than us going through to the next round.

We are naïve in the way we are set up and seem unable to understand that against a team that is simple better all round than us we need to apply a different approach than 442 with Fernando and Milner in midfield and Nasri and Silva as back up defenders.

Lesser teams would have more chance of winning at the Nou Camp than we do; because they are not deluded and recognise they are inferior, then they play to their strengths and work their balls off for 90+ minutes.

This manager and this team are just are not capable of doing that and such a work ethic. 

[goat]

todays word of the day is deluded

wonder what 26th will be

[gavin]

First leg score was 2-1. We have a chance to go through still. I far from expect us to do it but to say it is deluded that we have a chance is too far the other way. We can beat Barcelona. I am sure we could score a few goals against them. My main concern is that we will concede as many.

They probably weren't quite as positive second half but I would say it wasn't their intent to concede and to look like they could concede more either. For a period it was perfectly realistic that City could get an equaliser. The first half was very bad but you can't deny we made inroads in the second half. Still in the tie.

[goat]

if dzeko had a head like a 50p coin it could have been all over by now in citys favour

[Zabba]

I fear that we will save ourselves for the Barca return match, rather than giving 100% against Liverpool and going all out for a win and the PL, in a delusional belief we can somehow make the next stage of the CL. 

Which of course we can with a MIRACLE.

[Lekos]

What on earth are you on about now? Standard drivel.

We have Liverpool this Sunday and don't play Barca again until the 18th March (after Leicester at home and then Burnley away).

[The Blue Blooded Maniac]

[Zabba]

So original Durk, how did you come up with it. I guess you must be a member of Mensa (or more likely menopausal).

.

[Zabba]

Good articulate article from Guardian. Mind I disagree with the last bit in my view only a miracle can save us at Nou Camp from another limp CL exit.

Article Link

Barney Ronay, Guardian

In many ways Manchester City found exactly the right team to lose to on Tuesday night in what was one of the more profound narrowly preserved 2-1 thrashings one is likely to see. Like City Barcelona may or may not end up winning any trophies this season. They may also shed another manager, although of the two men whirling and pointing on the touchline at the Etihad Stadium Manuel Pellegrini looks the more likely to suffer in the wake of this tie, a victim of weighty expectations but also his own bodged tactical plan in Manchester.

Should they fail, however, Barcelona will at least fail in the right way, a team who can lose while still appearing to know in exact detail how they intended to win. For City, on the other hand, the defeat flagged up how far this spirited champion club still has to go.

Most obviously Pellegrini sent out a team ill-equipped to deal with this opposition. City’s manager may get another season after this, depending on the availability and willingness of City’s preferred alternative, Pep Guardiola. But his mistake in setting his team up in an attacking 4-4-2 highlighted above all the disorienting pressures of the job at a club that is still all aspiration and ambition at this level.

No matter how Pellegrini tries to spin his team’s stirring zombie resurrection in the second half, the fact is the players he selected were never really given a chance. The talk before the match was of City’s need to play without fear, of the craving for a defining European performance just as 20 years ago Manchester United had those unforgettable matches against Juventus and Chelsea found their own muse in Barcelona in the early Mourinho years.

And yet common sense dictated City simply play the game in front of them whatever their wider sense of destiny. Málaga had shown a way to play Barcelona at the weekend: press high up the pitch, put two men on Messi, force those malevolent little ball-playing superheroes inside every time. Instead City’s manager lost his bearings, gambling that the best of his team, the ability to build up wave after wave of full-width attack, might overload Barcelona’s vulnerable defence. Instead it left his team exposed to a superior central midfield not to mention the deadliest attacking trident since Poseidon as City’s own two-man attack presented Sergio Busquets with the freedom to run the game from the space just behind them.

And so City came marching out across the ring with their chin held high waiting to be picked off and providing in the end not a defining victory but an example of how the champion spirit of a fine group of players can cover shortcuts and work still to be done in the grander plan for only so long.

City, of course, do have a plan. The visitors on Tuesday night are in many ways their model for the future. Approaching the ground before kick-off through the vast construction site of the Etihad Campus it was clear that plenty of City fans had taken the opportunity to watch the under-21s in action at the excellent new academy stadium next door. The idea here is to create a sense of continuity, a grand tactical and textural scheme, a club at home in its own self-sustaining model. Tuesday night was a register of the distance there is still to go at the cutting edge, most notably during a first-half Barcelona performance that spoke to an entire supporting culture, 40 years in the incubation, of how the game should be played.

Before kick-off inside the Etihad there was a crackle of authentic heavyweight European competition in the air for a meeting of two teams who are second in their domestic leagues and who have spent impressive amounts of money in recent years. And yet on the pitch the difference in style and ambition was painful at times. To borrow a phrase from the great Australian Bill Woodfull, there were two teams out there, but only one of them was playing elite level modern European football. And with half an hour gone this tie was effectively over as Barcelona produced football of a different style and calibre to anything seen here this season, a team completely in tune with itself, seeing the pass before it came, movements synchronised all over the pitch.

We like to scoff at the idea of a footballing “philosophy” in this country, to sneer when one of the great footballing method men â€" whose fingerprints are still there on this Barcelona team â€" is unable to reinvent a drifting Manchester United team in the space of six months. But it is no accident that Barcelona looked from the start like a coherent whole, able to display all those accumulated good habits of touch and pass and move when it matters most. This is what happens when you have a system in place so sturdy it supersedes the managerial merry-go-round, the loss of great players, the pressures of performing that left City looking like a team attempting to invent a way of playing on the hoof.

A quick glance at the two teams is instructive. The number of home-reared players in the Barcelona first XI has dipped but they still had four dominant outfield players in Messi, Busquets, Gerard Piqué and Andrés Iniesta. Even the players bought in fit the pattern, selected with a playing style in mind not just a scattergun sense of big-name splurge. Ivan Rakitic was a considered midfield reinforcement. Neymar may be a marketing prize but he also plays as if he could have been raised in La Masia. Luis Suárez has shown in the last few weeks that he is, stylistically, what Barcelona need, not just what they could get at the time.
By contrast City are basically the same old New City with £130m of fresh talent bought in over the past two years but largely absent here; a failure to buy well has put extra pressure on the stalwarts of that first title-winning team. It has been obvious for some time that the Premier League produces revenue not footballers. But at some point the absence of method, the churn of new signings and new managers will naturally affect the product itself.

Compared to the visitors City’s team at the Etihad was a high-priced hodgepodge with an attack that jammed together a 6ft4in Bosnian nicknamed “the lamppost” in his own country and the relentlessly subtle movement of Sergio Agüero. James Milner and Fernando looked like a will-this-do? central midfield pair sent out in hope. City have spirit and great heart. Only a fool would write them off completely in the second leg. But the fact is what pressure they exerted came when they basically had nothing to lose, like a lower league team having a right old go in the dying minutes of a third-round FA Cup tie.

This is perhaps to be expected against the very best. City are still an evolving idea and this may be a useful defeat in the end, just as their likely exit from the competition in Catalonia could be the spur for a clear-out of the ageing component parts of City 1.0. Pellegrini was spooked by the gravity of the occasion in Manchester but he remains a fine manager well liked by the hierarchy. Whether he can stay in place to oversee the next stage in this constant sky blue revolution may depend on a famous change of gear at the Camp Nou.

[The Blue Blooded Maniac]

So original Durk, how did you come up with it. I guess you must be a member of Mensa (or more likely menopausal).

.

[Rowley Birkin QC]

I think the Guardian article is very good.

I especially agree with -

A quick glance at the two teams is instructive. The number of home-reared players in the Barcelona first XI has dipped but they still had four dominant outfield players in Messi, Busquets, Gerard Piqué and Andrés Iniesta. Even the players bought in fit the pattern, selected with a playing style in mind not just a scattergun sense of big-name splurge.

and -

But it is no accident that Barcelona looked from the start like a coherent whole, able to display all those accumulated good habits of touch and pass and move when it matters most. This is what happens when you have a system in place so sturdy it supersedes the managerial merry-go-round, the loss of great players...

This is what city have to aspire to.

[The Blue Blooded Maniac]

I think the Guardian article is very good.

I especially agree with -

A quick glance at the two teams is instructive. The number of home-reared players in the Barcelona first XI has dipped but they still had four dominant outfield players in Messi, Busquets, Gerard Piqué and Andrés Iniesta. Even the players bought in fit the pattern, selected with a playing style in mind not just a scattergun sense of big-name splurge.

We havent had any big name splurge's. We've bought players who have performed consistantly for their respective clubs for postitions that were needed to be fullfilled. We payed alot of money for them to. Why that is though I dont know because most of the players we have bought in the last couple of seasons have only ever been linked with us.

But it is no accident that Barcelona looked from the start like a coherent whole, able to display all those accumulated good habits of touch and pass and move when it matters most. This is what happens when you have a system in place so sturdy it supersedes the managerial merry-go-round, the loss of great players...

This is what city have to aspire to.

This I agree with. We have had the same core of first team players for a good few years now and should be developing the team around them. No such luck though.

[Rowley Birkin QC]

I think Yaya can be called a big name splurge, but otherwise I agree the statement isn't entirely reflective - but I do think the term scattergun is an accurate description of much of our dealings in the transfer market so far.

[Zabba]

My worry is we have spent good sums of money that could have bought us really good players on what has turned out to be average players, Fernando, Navas, Mangala, to mention a few. I can see why this has happened as they all threaten at times to be really good players. We need to learn the lessons.

Pelle worries me, he is likeable, but chops and changes needlessly and pointlessly. Find our starting 11 and get them working as a unit, then rest one or two and allow other players to integrate. Do not mess with the central defence unless unavoidable.

Three superstars in our team, mega signings, Aguero, Yaya and Silva.

[goat]

My worry is we have spent good sums of money that could have bought us really good players on what has turned out to be average players, Fernando, Navas, Mangala, to mention a few.

thats the thing, on the face of it really good players came in, a spanish and french international

no signing is guaranteed to work no matter who it is or the fee, we could buy messi and cristiano ronaldo tomorrow but if they dont fit in/their mrs has the hump/ fernando touches them they wont play at their best and look bad signings

im assuming you are only going on the name or what daily mail says so using that we would never have had bargains like vinny and zabba

[Zabba]

I certainly thought Navas was a good signing at the time having watched. Mangala was a no brainer in my view. Put them in the PL and tempo and passion from opponents shows you what they really are like and boy, in the main, that has been mega disappointing.

You said it many times playing for Porto and like teams even average players can look like stars. Better scouting and transfer due diligence needed in future.

[clevblue]

Yes, especially if we win nothing, this summer will bring in players

as far as the return leg against Barca is concerned, what strikes me is that Barca played very very well, and it will be difficult for them to produce that level again next month at home - plus the fact that they will be under great pressure to do so! They are a team that can be beaten, as they were only last week. I think we have a good chance of doing a Bayern on them because of that.

[goat]

I certainly thought Navas was a good signing at the time having watched. Mangala was a no brainer in my view. Put them in the PL and tempo and passion from opponents shows you what they really are like and boy, in the main, that has been mega disappointing.

You said it many times playing for Porto and like teams even average players can look like stars. Better scouting and transfer due diligence needed in future.

like i said, scouting etc doesnt guarantee anything, even players youve seen playing here have looked shit/dont work out when they sign, rodwell,sinclair and johnson