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Manchester City Thread

cfdh_edmundo said:
If you could potentially swap Jovetic and Yaya Touré for Pogba, and Dzecko (and money) for De Bruyne you might be able to do it within the bounds of FFP. All 3 of those players (leaving) are good players, but with the exception of Yaya Touré they are squad players rather than starters, and even then Pogba would be a like for like replacement for Touré. I probably wouldn't sell both of Sagna and Kolarov as that would mean a lot of turnover in terms of full backs. I don't think Kolarov would be on that much in terms of wages (he was signed from Lazio), he seems reasonably happy as a squad player so I'd keep him as that. I'd ship out Navas as you might still get reasonable money for him and I don't think he is that suited to the PL.

Seeing Tevez play very well last night, I do get the feeling that maybe you should have tried to keep him. If Pellegrini wants to play two upfront (which he sometimes does) it might be possible with to pressuring strikers (like Tevez and to a lesser extent Aguero) but not with someone like say Bony, Dzecko or even Silva in a 5 man midfield - against a team like Barcelona there just wouldn't be enough pressure on their defence.
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I don't like Kolarov. Him, Dzeko, Yaya and Nasri have questionable work ethics and attitudes and only Yaya and Nasri have the quality to make keeping them worthwhile imo.
We have a kid in the youth setup called Angelino who looks a very good prospect, unfortunately, like most of our better U-21's he's 17/18 rather than 19/20/21 so it's probably be too early for him atm so we'd probably need to sign a new LB.
I agree we can't sell too many fullbacks, but I'd even consider using Zabaleta as a LB when needed and bringing in Dani Alves, if he isn't PSG bound.

As for Tevez, I love him but I think he was sold for financial reasons. He was on 198k p/w http://www.ghanaianreactoronline.com/images/news/payslip2323.jpg and was due a hefty bonus for seeing out his contract. With FFP on the horizon he had to be sold. He was replaced with Negredo for a similar transfer fee and a third of the wages. Before he got homesick it looked a brilliant piece of business. Like Tevez, his workrate allowed us to play 2 up top, as you say, even with Yaya in a 2 man CM.

Navas could be replaced with Lopes http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...tml?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490


On Pogba being a replacement for Yaya, I agree long term. Whether it's likely to happen or not I dunno but for the sake of continuity I'd probably keep Yaya for a season more at least. He wouldn't play every week but pushed a little further upfield with less defensive responsibilities he'd still bang in the goals.
 
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Fray Bentos said:
City cant go out and spunk billions of quid again. FFP won't let them.

The teams in the best positions for investment are us and Man Utd moving forwards. We have the huge attendances and fans worldwide to allow us to spend what we want.

Our problem is that we WONT spend loads to catch up. Man Utd will though :(
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We'll be able spend similar levels to what Utd did last summer, which would be enough to bring in 2 or 3 top players.
 
MadbaLL said:
it's true... sad is that you can't face it. pellegrini is not even near top class managers list.

but one thing is rubbish for sure - players he brought (along with bergestein).
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I can't face it? I don't support Man City, so why would I care?! The thing is, I AGREE with you - he isn't a top calibre of manager, I said this a few posts above, and a few weeks ago as well.

BUT when you have Yaya Toure strolling around like it's a friendly, you can't just blame the manager. There are lots of problems at City and the manager isn't the only one.

WHEN you throw silly money at any and every player, hoping that you'll unearth a dozen gems, you will always have the problems that City have. Look at all the bang average players they have signed over the last 2-3 years and for silly money. This isn't all Pellegrini's fault, this is the club's fault for allowing it to keep happening.
 
I rate Pelligrini to be a good manager. He did well w/ average clubs and made them a force. He made Villarreal a tough crack and then was called to run RM. It didnt work there ,but RM don`t call anyone to lead their club to success. Then , last ,but not least he took Malaga into the CL ! He has experience and the know how...I agree w/ Fray players look they couldnt be arsed.
 
Pellegrini is a very good manager and always has been.

It's amazing how fickle football fans are!
 
What is a good manager?

I don't doubt a second that Pellegrini is a good manager, but for wich kind of team.

I think there are hunderds of fantastic managers who never have the chance to manage really gigantic teams like City and Real Madrid.

I also think that most of them would never succede with those big clubs. Just like the Mourinho's and the Van Gaals would never succede with second division clubs.

At the moment it seems that Pellegrini is a fatastic manager for the Villareals and the Malagas of this world, but not for the very best teams. Does that make him a bad manager? Not sure.


IMO Manchester City is a very unbalanced team just like Chelsea has been for years and just like other completely "bought" teams are. Every team needs Zidanes, but also Pavones. When James Milner is your Pavone, your team is unbalanced because Milner is too good to be a Pavone.

I'm pretty sure that these teams miss something because of a lack of homegrown players.

Why is the current Spurs team better and less vulnerable than former editions? Because they have a spine of homegrown players who bring something extra without being exceptionally players. The day that City starts producent homegroN players, their team will be better.

IMO Pellegrini isn't the reason why City are underachieving in Europe. All English clubs are out...enough said.
 
The words 'James Milner' and 'Good' don't deserve to be in the same sentence.

He's a cart horse that runs around a lot. He's no Matic or Makalele.
 
I didnt know Milner is better then Ozil, Cazorla , Ramsey. :LOL: I wonder how much value City could get (if) they sold Milner?
 
What happened with the Kompany- Mangala non substitution?
And what is wrong with Kompany?

I always thought he was not as good as everybody said (injury prone and from the beginning prone to silly mistakes because he wants to be seen as a cultured defender), but now things are getting really worse.

His display against (a very, very average) Israël was disgracefull.
i guess you people know that he got two yellow cards in that match and that the second was really stupid.
In the first half he also did something completely stupid. Around the middle line, he attesten a shot on goal...

He is becoming a liability for bot club and country.
 
gerd said:
What happened with the Kompany- Mangala non substitution?
And what is wrong with Kompany?

I always thought he was not as good as everybody said (injury prone and from the beginning prone to silly mistakes because he wants to be seen as a cultured defender), but now things are getting really worse.

His display against (a very, very average) Israël was disgracefull.
i guess you people know that he got two yellow cards in that match and that the second was really stupid.
In the first half he also did something completely stupid. Around the middle line, he attesten a shot on goal...

He is becoming a liability for bot club and country.
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Yep, I'm gutted he's banned against us in the next qualifier as Bale would have ruined him.
 
He was fine last night and obviously said he was ok to carry on.

Not gonna waste my time defending him, only a fool doesn't rate Kompany.
 
On TalkSports fans were slating ManCity players . They feel only Silva / Aquero plays w/ their heart for the club, but admitted they'll be the 1st to leave (if) they finish outside the top 4 lol.

I keep hearing BR and Sterling coming to ManCity - Summer 2015!
 
Godotelli said:
He was fine last night and obviously said he was ok to carry on.

Not gonna waste my time defending him, only a fool doesn't rate Kompany.
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He's off form so would have been happy for him to play against us right now but he probably would have picked up by June.
Still, I don't go along with he's world class like some do.
 
Godotelli said:
He was fine last night and obviously said he was ok to carry on.

Not gonna waste my time defending him, only a fool doesn't rate Kompany.
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You have a habit of insulting people if you can't defend yourself Godot.
Kompany was dramatic against Palace.

Who was his opponnent ?

Alexis Sanchez ? Messi ? Ronaldo ? Benzema ? No.

Murray.

Hardly a world class forward. Only a fool can say that he wa fine against Palace and Murray.

Look at the stats.

Kompany and Murray had 11 aerial duels in the entire match...Murray won 10,yet Kompany is 7cm's bigger than Murray.

I agree with you, defending Kompany is a waste of time.

I have had serveral contacts with Kompany for a social project around football. This is a few years ago(when he played for Hamburg). Kompany is a very intelligent young man with a social conscience who wants to help people who are less well off.

Somewhere along the way, things went wrong. Kompany became this larger than life figure who was bigger than football, who has money in serveral business features, who has a television production company that has made a real life soap about the qualification round of our national team and who was the undisputed leader of our national team. He got priviliges that other players didn't get and now the magic has gone...other players in the team are fed up with him and Kompany is blind for criticism (well meant criticism).

I always saw Kompany as an extremely talented player who had some inconsistencies and tends to make mistakes. Under Mancini he was one of the best central defenders in the world because (except for corners and free kicks) Mancini wanted him to stay on his own half for 90 minutes. All he had to do was defend. I don't know if this is true, but here in Belgium there are rumours that Kompany was very instrumental in the sacking of Mancini...perhaps that was a mistake.

Under Pellegrini Kompany has become a liability and our national coach doesn't really helps...he (Wilmots) once was a great motivator, but is tactically weak...Kompany desperately needs a strong coach at City and for Belgium.
 
I could defend myself/Kompany, but I choose not to. It's just silly. Kompany is and has been one of the best defenders in the world for the last 5 years, he doesn't need me to defend him. He has just gone through his only sticky patch in his City career, I'm not into kneejerk nonsense

I don't even need to look it up to know your stats are wrong/you're reading them wrong. Kompany and Murray did not go up for 11 aerial duels
Murray won most duels in the air, I would estimate he won 4 or 5 vs Kompany but to just point to 7cm is simplistic. CRonaldo is rarely the tallest player on the pitch but he is good in the air. Some players are just good in the air regardless of height (and 7cm isn't much anyway). Murray is one. His whole career in the lower divisions has been built on it.
 
Your not really interested in a discussion are you ? The only thing that counts for you is being right.

IMO (but that is only my point of view), Kompany has never been a defender like Baresi, Stam, Cannavaro, Nesta and other top class defenders. Is Kompany among the best5 in the world ? I don't think so,but if he is then that is because nowadays there are no top class defenders (in the EPL certainly not, that is the reason why English clunbs are rubbish in Europe for some seasons now...).

Even in his best period, Kompany continued to make the odd fatal mistake...people here in Belgium always thought that this would disappear from his game if he got older...but it never really did.

And another telling statistic: last season City won more point with De Michelis (= Kompany absent), than with Kompany (= De Michelis absent).

It will be a very interesting summer for City. I heard on the Football Ramble podcast, that City has the oldest squad of the EPL...
 
Aligning your views to reality is kind of the point, no? If half of your post is based on incorrect stats and the other half on hearsay and speculation what is there to discuss?

Every player makes the odd mistake, and that applies to those you listed as well.

As for your new statistic, I'll assume you're correct this time, which games was he absent from? Something tells me Kompany missed the easier games (partly due to being rested), and what kind of sample sizes are they? Stats are often misleading. If stats were all that you'd be claiming Demichelis is the 2nd best CB in european football and Clichy the best fullback http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...5154&jumpTo=comment-81485154#comment-81485154

"Mancini wanted him to stay on his own half for 90 minutes. All he had to do was defend."
It's the same now. The main difference is that we're more open in CM under Pellegrini, far more open than any other team in the PL, and so our CBs are put in too many unnecessary dilemmas of closing down vs standing off
 
ManCity has one of the best squads no doubt and atm the table has them 4th. I agree w/ gerd EPL don't have great defenders. They all want to score and are guilty of over pressing. Kompany is above average in the EPL whose form has been on the decline. In another league , he would be exposed very easy is what gerd is saying or what I understood from his post. He is debating Godo's top (5) defenders in the World stands, that includes other leagues beside EPL.
 
There are very few top level defenders left because the officiating greatly favours attackers these days. You can have all the organisational skills in the world, but if touching the heel of an attacking player in the box is a penalty, you might as well not bother.

Going to ground with any contact - or worse - initiating the contact yourself then going to ground (Hazard's a bloody master at this) just works in football today. And the 'rule' seems to be 'well he's touched him there' so it's all okay.

It's almost a non-contact sport in certain leagues. So of course defending is going to look worse.

My other favourite is that attackers can hold off defenders by grabbing their shirt and it's 'showing good strength' but if a defender does the identical act it's a foul because the attacker will go to ground, but the defender can't take that risk.

Anywho /rant over. Guess what position I play :)
 
Good point about the risk vs reward of going down easily.
The likes of Boateng, Kompany, T. Silva, Godin, Chiellini, Pepe, Ramos, Hummels, Pique, Terry would probably have been better, not worse, 15-30 years ago as they'd 'get away' with more. Rio and Vidic would perhaps still be playing at a higher level too
Conversely, the best forwards of the modern game probably wouldn't be as highly rated. One of the main reasons why comparing eras is so difficult. Messi vs Maradona? Messi's record is insane but I'm sure Maradona would have run rampant too in today's game.
 
Yeah, I think that's right. Maradonna and Best both had unbelievable balance, and if they faced a lot of today's 'challenges' they'd think every match was a friendly!

I'd like the rules to change slightly to give more benefit of the doubt to defenders. Not sure how they could do that, but I really think it's too skewed towards touch=fouls etc. That's not the way it works in amateur footy, so shouldn't really in the pros either. Obviously dangerous tackles should (and largely have) been eliminated, but this whole 'wait for contact then throw yourself to ground' is pretty disgusting. The number of replays you see where a player is touched on his left leg, but his right leg collapses is ridiculous. For all teams.

Pundits could do their part, but then, expecting them to change is rather naive.
 
I don't know where this fixation with Beest comes from.
To mention Best and not mentioning Pele, Cruijff, Di Stefano, Garrincha....Best was hyper talented, but in the he failed to fullfill his talent.

To me he was a flop. LAW and Charlton were big players, Best wasn't. I played indoor football with Franco Pirelli. He was seen as the biggest talent ever (and not in indoor football), yet he ended up in jail...i ask myself what a player he would have been if he loved for his profession. The same apllies to Best.
 
i'd like to weigh in, but i only got a few minutes, so i'll try to be as concise as possible.

i believe that to judge a player u need to consider his entire carreer (which is why i have such a hard time judging youngsters.... their carreer is still non-existant). even great players can have one or 2 under par seasons, so the wider the time-span u consider, the more accurate is your judgement.
and in my personal opinion (which probably isn't worth much, as i guess i haven't followed kompany as closely as gerd and godotelli), kompany has been, for most of his carreer, an absolutely fantastic defender.

i also believe that, in order to tag a player as "top class", u need to compare him to his current peers only. if u're trying to establish if a player is "world class" u should only compare him to the best players in that position right now.
if u try to compare kompany to the likes of nesta and baresi, then u're not just trying to establish whether he's world class anymore... u're trying to figure out if he's one of the "all time greatests" in that position (which is very different from being top class).
so does kompany compares to the likes of baresi, maldini, nesta, beckembauer, scirea? of course not. but then again there's no player who is even close to that level today.
does he belong to the same class of thiago silva, hummels and the others best defenders out there today? in my opinion he does (but that's just me).

one final point. chances are we will never see another baresi or another nesta. and not just because the officiating style of the refs shifted the balance in favour of offensive players (although that's a very good point ryan ;) ).

the truth is we don't teach defending anymore. the advent of zonal marking marked a cultural change in how we approach defending. defending today doesn't depend on individual technical skills as much as it depends on the coordination between the players who form the line.
trainers and academy coaches soon adapted to the change, and, as a result, today we have a new breed of central defenders. players who, as they were young kids, spent most ot their time in the academy, learning how to read an offence, how to coordinate their movement between each others, how to shift the line back and forth, how to swap their marking assignements without changing their actual position.....
that's all great. problem is they focused so much on theese aspects of the game, that they didn't really have any time to learn how to tackle and how to mark.
there are some aspects of defending which are completely overlooked by modern trainers and youth coaches. and i'm not saying this coz i have some specific insight or coz i have some friends who work in the business..... i simply see it every time a watch a game in tv.
modern defenders have an amazing vision and a spectacular timing and coordination, but their individual technique is simply non-existant. even the best of them often make amateurish mistakes, when it comes to certain situations.

u can see it for yourselves. this weekend focus your attention on defenders (especially during those close-ups they often show on tv).
look at their feet-placement. they always keep their feet slightly apart (which is correct) but they never keep their feet pointing in different directions (kinda like this: \ / ) which is how a defender should always keep his feet while marking (coz it allows quicker lateral position adjustments and it decreases the gap between your feet).
they always keep their eyes on the ball and on the opponents feet and never on the opponents knees and calves (which is what they should be looking).
when they're trying to figure out where the ball carrier is going to go with his dribble (left or right) they always look at their eyes and shoulders (which is why theyre so easily fooled)... and, again, they never look where they should be looking (knees and calves).
they often keep a low center of gravity (by bending their knees), but they never even try to keep a straight back (which is just as important as lowering your centre of gravity).
when they're performing a front-block tackle, they usually lead with their preferred foot (which is just a ridiculous amateur mistake).

now i'm not saying trainers and academy coaches don't teach the basics of defending anymore (that would be ridiculous).... what i'm saying is that they simply gloss over the rudiments of individual defending and spend most of their time focusing on other aspects of defending (mostly line movements). simply put, it's tactical teaching over technical teaching.
but theese aren't aspects of the game u can simply gloss over. feet placement is to defending what guard position is to boxing; as u're a kid u're supposed to spend days... weeks focusing on how to keep your feet when approaching the ball carrier, or how to keep your knees and back.... or focusing on keeping your eyes on those parts of the ball carrier's body which can be good tell-tale signs of what he is gonna do next. only through endless practice theese habits will become natural (u have to repeat some movements so many times that they become second nature.... so u don't even have to think about "how to keep a proper stance" anymore).
and anyone can see modern day defenders (even the top ones) never really acquired such familiarity with the most basic rudiments of marking and tackling.

zonal marking changed defending for good. and there's no doubt defending today is a much more complex and collective effort than it was 25 years ago.... the only downside is that we're so focused on teaching our kids the dynamics of a defensive line, that we don't spend enough time trying to teach them how to mark and tackle. and as a result, body-check is all there is to marking today.

and that's the difference between thiago silva, hummels, chiellini, terry, even ferdinand and pique...... and the likes of nesta, baresi, wierchowood, passarella, maldini, blanc, thuram, scirea, kohler, sammer.
those guys didn't just have the talent..... they also had the best training and education a defender could get. and that training and education allowed them to hone their skills to a level which is simply unreachable for modern defenders.
so much for conciseness, huh! :P
 
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what a disgrace yesteday...

pellegrini = the biggest flop, joke of a coach;

i don't want to mention other long time flops this whole season, like kompany, demichelis, yaya, navas, clichy...

such a disgrace...
 
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