So what does Pep need to do?

[freshie]

Get his players to stop missing absolute sitters.

This and sign some defenders who can actually defend. Oh and a goalkeeper who makes saves

[freshie]

Accept quickly he is trying to win an F1 with a ford transit, the players are not capable of playing his way, it really is that simple, defensive errors are a weekly occurrence. Teams sit back and the rest is there for us to see. We are also inefficient. 10 chances and all we have is an own goal.

Thing is, if we took some of the 100s of clear chances we keep missing we wouldn't have to be concerned about the defence. The more that we miss them the more pressure we heap on the back.

West ham
Scum
Boro
Everton
WBA
Chelsea
Burnley
Soton
Sunderland

We should have smashed all of these and we've looked shaky cos we keep missing chances.

Fair point but the worrying thing is that whenever the opposition attack our goal I fear we are going to concede a goal with this shambolic defence. In 4 seasons we have gone from having the meanest defence in the league to the leakiest. We don't concede loads of chances but with this defence the opposition don't need too many chances to score and this is a huge problem

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

Start by dropping Bravo
Follow it up with Otter
Get two full backs.

[mr_nool]

Except Stones, all our defence including keepers are over 28 which is horrible at this point. We kept many of them too much instead of trying to change many of them. Now we have to do this all at once and we might get ahead of ourselves and buy some flops.

Now, he needs to stop this 3 on the back shit. It does not work,simple. Pellegrini would had been crucified (and was for far less decisions) for his decisions. Things will come, but I don't understand why he is trying this stuff with players that are not capable of doing what he actually wants.

Has a huge job on his hand. Let's see.

PS: I think we saw today the diffence from a team that is playing in Europe and one that is absent
PPS: Our schedule was excelent in the league and we manage to lose points were we shouldn't have. I hope in march-april-may this will not affect us that period when we will have derby after derby.

I don't like the 3 at the back stuff but is that reason we lost today or was it simply because our best players missed a whole bunch of great chances and then we committed hari kari with our defending

We keep on missing a lot, don't we?

Not normal for a team of our calibre. I think the 3 system will fail with any players there. This does not work in England. Simple example, trips at small teams, they usually need spaces on the lines to put good crosses in. We need RB and LB to stop that and help us up front. I understand what he is trying to do, but this is not Barcelona and Bayern. He does not understand England yet and his statements about refs is proving that. Here you will get a shitload of decisions against you and teams will play their heart out.

We played our best football under Pep with 4-2-3-1.

Chelsea are top of the league and they play with 3 at the back...

[Dubciteh]

As nool said three at the back isnt neccasarily the problem. In our case its the three we are using, at least two are very poor and the other is essentially a kid at a new club.

I think theres been very few matches pep has got his tactics wrong, they were right yest, we destroyed chelsea yest and should have been out of sight. Instead a couple of errors and chelsea efficiency and we lose 3-1. If we took our chances like our opposition did we would be 10 points clear.

So what we need is acouple of defenders and another striker and a bit of bloody fortune!

[Hazy2]

Accept quickly he is trying to win an F1 with a ford transit, the players are not capable of playing his way, it really is that simple, defensive errors are a weekly occurrence. Teams sit back and the rest is there for us to see. We are also inefficient. 10 chances and all we have is an own goal.

Did all the clear chances we had create themselves? Did we miss them because of the tactics? Clearly something was working.

The game got away from us when the players stopped caring about shape and possession, as far as I could see

I am being picky, we have an own goal for all of our efforts, Chelsea have done the same as every team in the league but Bournemouth at our place, be paitient and chances will come. They rode there luck I watched it, however we all have to accept the defending aspect of our game is bottom half team, Barca win was great, but we have major issues, when asked to defend.
And defending starts way up the pitch, as for straight balls up to Costa. Don't get me started that is keystone cops.

[Peter Doherty (AGAIG)]

He needs to address the mentality issues within the squad. As poor as Otamendi (and Bravo, to a lesser extent) looked on the first goal, Pep predicted that Chelsea would convert any chances they were given in his press conference yesterday. The team should have anticipated the likelihood of conceding and stuck to their game plan rather than losing their heads, letting the game slip away, and then losing their discipline.

Once the equalizer went in, the game was suddenly end to end. We got stretched out and were too far apart from each other. The first move after the kickoff was an aimless run up the left that led us nowhere, and when the ball came back to the half way line Stones played a ball to KDB which he miscontrolled and then threw his arms up as if to blame Stones. They need to stick together in moments like this.

One minute later, Sane decided to try to dribble through the middle and lost possession which almost gave Chelsea another chance. Then KDB tried the same, but deeper, and with the same result. Next possession Bravo went long to Aguero who was then pressing alone, 40 yards away from any other City player. After that Sane tried the same thing again and lost the ball again. Their heads went and so did the plan.

The mistakes that followed for goals 2 and 3 were inevitable, even though we still got a couple more half chances after the equalizer - the actual game plan went out of the window. Pep needs to convince them to stick to the system that was clearly working for them.

I think that's a pretty fair analysis. Guardiola went mad at Bravo when he punted that ball to Aguero.

I'd rather have Caballero in net as he is a much better keeper and can pass the ball fairly well. Other than that, the transfer window is the only short-term answer to the shit that is our defence, generally speaking. It's much too slow and takes too many unnecessary risks (Otter) or stupid punts into the air (Kolarov).

[Peter Doherty (AGAIG)]

He needs to address the mentality issues within the squad. As poor as Otamendi (and Bravo, to a lesser extent) looked on the first goal, Pep predicted that Chelsea would convert any chances they were given in his press conference yesterday. The team should have anticipated the likelihood of conceding and stuck to their game plan rather than losing their heads, letting the game slip away, and then losing their discipline.

Once the equalizer went in, the game was suddenly end to end. We got stretched out and were too far apart from each other. The first move after the kickoff was an aimless run up the left that led us nowhere, and when the ball came back to the half way line Stones played a ball to KDB which he miscontrolled and then threw his arms up as if to blame Stones. They need to stick together in moments like this.

One minute later, Sane decided to try to dribble through the middle and lost possession which almost gave Chelsea another chance. Then KDB tried the same, but deeper, and with the same result. Next possession Bravo went long to Aguero who was then pressing alone, 40 yards away from any other City player. After that Sane tried the same thing again and lost the ball again. Their heads went and so did the plan.

The mistakes that followed for goals 2 and 3 were inevitable, even though we still got a couple more half chances after the equalizer - the actual game plan went out of the window. Pep needs to convince them to stick to the system that was clearly working for them.

I think that's a pretty fair analysis. Guardiola went mad at Bravo when he punted that ball to Aguero.

I'd rather have Caballero in net as he is a much better keeper and can pass the ball fairly well. Other than that, the transfer window is the only short-term answer to the shit that is our defence, generally speaking. It's much too slow and takes too many unnecessary risks (Otter) or stupid punts into the air (Kolarov).

Oh, and take our chances. If KDB takes that chance we run out comfortable winners, despite that cunt of a ref.

[Niall Quinns Discopants]

As nool said three at the back isnt neccasarily the problem. In our case its the three we are using, at least two are very poor and the other is essentially a kid at a new club.

I think theres been very few matches pep has got his tactics wrong, they were right yest, we destroyed chelsea yest and should have been out of sight. Instead a couple of errors and chelsea efficiency and we lose 3-1. If we took our chances like our opposition did we would be 10 points clear.

So what we need is acouple of defenders and another striker and a bit of bloody fortune!

Three at the back as such isn't the problem. The problem is the versatility and movement needed from those players in back four. Since they should all be centerbacks by trade (fullbacks there is mostly recipe for disaster for any manager trying it) you would need one left footed and on rightfooted. Otherwise wingers will take the piss always. One in the middle has to be supersolid. Essentially at the level we are aspiring to be we would have to have three more or oess world class central defenders with aforementioned attributes. Where the hell are we going to get those? Right now Kompany would be more than able player skillwise to play in the middle and lead the three but he is unfortunately physically done and will NEVER AGAIN play 40 or 50 odd games for us. Then we got Stones to play on the right. Mangala for all his weaknesses could've maybe vacated the position on the left. Otamendi would have been back up for Stones and Kompany. Other than that we simply don't have enough centerbacks. Which leads to misbalance we have in squad. We have ten million fullbacks, none of who are really suited to play centerback.

[johnny crossan]

As nool said three at the back isnt neccasarily the problem. In our case its the three we are using, at least two are very poor and the other is essentially a kid at a new club.

I think theres been very few matches pep has got his tactics wrong, they were right yest, we destroyed chelsea yest and should have been out of sight. Instead a couple of errors and chelsea efficiency and we lose 3-1. If we took our chances like our opposition did we would be 10 points clear.

So what we need is acouple of defenders and another striker and a bit of bloody fortune!

Three at the back as such isn't the problem. The problem is the versatility and movement needed from those players in back four. Since they should all be centerbacks by trade (fullbacks there is mostly recipe for disaster for any manager trying it) you would need one left footed and on rightfooted. Otherwise wingers will take the piss always. One in the middle has to be supersolid. Essentially at the level we are aspiring to be we would have to have three more or oess world class central defenders with aforementioned attributes. Where the hell are we going to get those? Right now Kompany would be more than able player skillwise to play in the middle and lead the three but he is unfortunately physically done and will NEVER AGAIN play 40 or 50 odd games for us. Then we got Stones to play on the right. Mangala for all his weaknesses could've maybe vacated the position on the left. Otamendi would have been back up for Stones and Kompany. Other than that we simply don't have enough centerbacks. Which leads to misbalance we have in squad. We have ten million fullbacks, none of who are really suited to play centerback.

roll on the cigar man then

[PeterParker]

Except Stones, all our defence including keepers are over 28 which is horrible at this point. We kept many of them too much instead of trying to change many of them. Now we have to do this all at once and we might get ahead of ourselves and buy some flops.

Now, he needs to stop this 3 on the back shit. It does not work,simple. Pellegrini would had been crucified (and was for far less decisions) for his decisions. Things will come, but I don't understand why he is trying this stuff with players that are not capable of doing what he actually wants.

Has a huge job on his hand. Let's see.

PS: I think we saw today the diffence from a team that is playing in Europe and one that is absent
PPS: Our schedule was excelent in the league and we manage to lose points were we shouldn't have. I hope in march-april-may this will not affect us that period when we will have derby after derby.

I don't like the 3 at the back stuff but is that reason we lost today or was it simply because our best players missed a whole bunch of great chances and then we committed hari kari with our defending

We keep on missing a lot, don't we?

Not normal for a team of our calibre. I think the 3 system will fail with any players there. This does not work in England. Simple example, trips at small teams, they usually need spaces on the lines to put good crosses in. We need RB and LB to stop that and help us up front. I understand what he is trying to do, but this is not Barcelona and Bayern. He does not understand England yet and his statements about refs is proving that. Here you will get a shitload of decisions against you and teams will play their heart out.

We played our best football under Pep with 4-2-3-1.

Chelsea are top of the league and they play with 3 at the back...

Yeah, because that is the only system Conte knows.

[patrickblue]

Amongst all the anger and doom and gloom, I'd like to give a bit of praise for the much maligned Jesus Navas.
He played a bit of a blinder.

[Vantage]

It's Big Willy Time. Bravo can do the ball juggling at half time.

[Mikhail Chigorin]

As nool said three at the back isnt neccasarily the problem. In our case its the three we are using, at least two are very poor and the other is essentially a kid at a new club.

I think theres been very few matches pep has got his tactics wrong, they were right yest, we destroyed chelsea yest and should have been out of sight. Instead a couple of errors and chelsea efficiency and we lose 3-1. If we took our chances like our opposition did we would be 10 points clear.

So what we need is acouple of defenders and another striker and a bit of bloody fortune!

I think I'd prefer to get two forwards and a centre-half.

After that, bring in Gunn, Maffeo and Angelino and give them a good run to see how they develop. In the same way, I'd also keep the door open for Tosin and Garcia.

I'd just regard this season as a learning curve, prior to a major clear out in the summer.

[nottsblue]

At the next press conference when asked about referees reply with "what is a referee? Is it an impartial adjudicator of the match who shows no bias to either side and is consistent in his decisions? Only I ask because the fellow who was in the position of referee in our last match didn't meet these requirements. In fact I would call him dishonest and/or incompetent at best and corrupt at worst."

See what the media hacks make of that

[iwasthere2012]

Amongst all the anger and doom and gloom, I'd like to give a bit of praise for the much maligned Jesus Navas.
He played a bit of a blinder.

I second that.

[nottsblue]

Amongst all the anger and doom and gloom, I'd like to give a bit of praise for the much maligned Jesus Navas.
He played a bit of a blinder.

I second that.

Aye, could have had three or four assists if the others knew where the goal was

[Bluez]

As we never keep clean sheets its there we need to start.
He made a mistake with the keeper situation, Hart should have been given the chance to learn a short passing game. Bring him back.
Otamendi is a liability. While he didn't do it too often yesterday, he dives in too often spending way too much of the game on his arse. When he misses we are exposed. We need a centerback.

[harveytravis]

As we never keep clean sheets its there we need to start.
He made a mistake with the keeper situation, Hart should have been given the chance to learn a short passing game. Bring him back.
Otamendi is a liability. While he didn't do it too often yesterday, he dives in too often spending way too much of the game on his arse. When he misses we are exposed. We need a centerback.

I think Hart should be given a chance.

[gmercer1]

Amongst all the anger and doom and gloom, I'd like to give a bit of praise for the much maligned Jesus Navas.
He played a bit of a blinder.

I've been on his back a lot the past season......but like you say he had one of his best games in a City shirt for me yesterday. The ref had one of his best games in a scum shirt