Mancini's City - is that paint dry yet?

[Kladze]

Did somebody deliberately turn this thread into a farce ?

[DoomMerchant]

the game that De Jong attempts to play for us isn't really much like the game he plays for the Dutch.

Why is that?

cheers

[Socrates]

De Jong is not good enough to do the job himself and needs assistance.

Jackpot

x2

he is a good player no doubt.. might be cos he is still bit inexperienced. or it my just be his style, but he runs around a little bit too much, where he could perhaps read the game more. Vieira could help his learning perhaps?

I personallty dont like all this DM bollox.. Id rather have two great attacking mids and fook the DM's off all together. The only reason we use them is due to our defence being a bit crap..

If you look at the credentials of Toure, Bridge, Komps, Jocott, and Richards, im pretty certain we could put together a reasonable defence.

They dont need protecting, they are good enough man for man defenders, we just need to let them defend. And we need someone that plays infornt of them who can pass the ball forwards. Half the problem we have getting the ball through midfield is that Barry is the only 1 central who can pass the thing and he's not pinpoint all the time. Hence why we end up going long. The only time we win midfield battles is when god teams sit off us and wait to counter. Shit teams get at us and we can deal with it because De Jong cant or isnt allowed to pass the ball over 5 yards .

Most of those players are just back in the side though Grob and until they do gel as a unit I think Mancini will look to protect them. Your point in the other post about NDJ is spot on though. He is just a terrier, he is pretty useless once he gets the ball. I am not that enamoured with Barry either. He gets box to box ok but hardly ever with the ball. We don't see the surging runs that we'd get if Michael Johnson was ever fit or if we signed a Gerrard type player. We aren't exactly overblessed with attacking midfield options though are we?

[Wonderwall]

I am really confused with mancini. I want a tight defence and he has changed how we defend, which will take time, so I will give him some time.

He seems to read the game well and will make changes when he sees there is a need, which is good, we have not had a manager like that in years. He was a striker and comes with a reputation for attacking football (according to all the mancini [strike]"lickers"[/strike] lovers, however, I think they have their man very wrong as his attacking sense is severely screwed up with City. We were a very attacking team under hughes and now we are very different! why? I have no idea. If we were water tight I could understand, but we are not. Mancini apparently lost his temper at hull, which is good to hear, I want more of that passion and action as we are not on the boil at the moment and his honeymoon period is over. He needs to start proving his reputation with some hard earned results.

[M147WN]

I think it's a valid point about not needing a deep defensive midfielder at all. However, as Socrates stated we don't have many options in midfield when it comes to mobile, middle of the park players.
I think we missed a great opportunity in the transfer window to rectify this and it seems the manager had his targets but for whatever reasons these didn't happen and he's now probobly erring on the defensive rather than risk a more attacking formation which may leave us more open to conceding.
I think without a DM you would hope the central defensive pair could be the catalysts for moving forward (Kolo is probobly the only capable of this/possibly Vinny) but with De jong in front of them this seldom happens.
Someone said there's more to playing the DM role than just tackling and that's exactly right! The good one's who've played this role down the years have had so much more to their game from Makalale to Colin Todd.
De jongs almost constant presence recently make us much less penetrative in other areas given the current options we have and makes Irelands (or any other central midfielders) task that much harder (especially if we're playing 2 wide men).
Scum, chelsea, arse, villa etc. don't regularly play a DM. scouse1 do. Is that why they've been struggling?

[gillie]

Slag me off for this i dont really care anymore.We are boring as fuck at moment if we score first we all know what comes next pull the shutters down the shop is shut.I have spoken to six blues today/yesterday and everyone thinks its shite at moment and at least three have 40years service in supporting us so imo its not knee jerk we are getting but people commenting on what they see.

[john68]

I have posted this previously and it still seems to me our biggest problem.
Our back four are set up to play closely together, meaning our full backs tuck in close to the central defenders. The midfield, with three defensive midfielders also play close to the back four. I understand the idea behind this is to create an impenetrable defended area, inviting opponents only to shoot from distance and trusting that if they do, our keeper can deal with the longer shots. We also appear to readily and willingly concede the midfield areas of the pitch.

The danger as I see it in playing this strategy is that we defend too small an area of the pitch and use too many players to do so. We also freely allow opponents too much free space to build up pressure and attack us.
Accordingly, we defend very deep, with a defensively set up midfield and the gap between our midfield and attack is stretched.

Because of the large gap, we are often forced to revert to using a long high ball to serve the forwards. On Saturday Adebayour won (I am tempted to say) nothing. In fact Ade (a) didn't bother to challenge the defender by jumping, (b) jumped far too early and the ball passed him or in some cases, (c) actually cowered down and ducked.
Our 2nd option of attack is to control and pass the ball out of defence. With the strategy we are playing, it is necessary to do this accurately with short high tempo passing. This allows the players to move forward as a unit and increase attacking pressure. On Saturday and often in previous games, we have done this far too slowly and opponents have easily set up a defense and closed down our options.
Our 3rd attacking option is to put the ball out to the flanks and attack down the line. This means that the midfield has to break out quickly in support. On Saturday and in previous games, our midfield are too far back to make up sufficient ground or move up slowly in order to retain a defensive shape should the attack break down.
We seem too reliant on the individual brillaince of our forwards. A penalty won through Johnson's attacking the Bolton line and a piece of wonderful skill by Adebayour gave us our 2 goals v Bolton and a determined chase by SWP v Stoke, our goal on Saturday.

I can only hope that Socrates is right...(but I am not sure)...that this is only temporary and at some point Mancini will unshackle our players and allow them the freedom to play further up the field.

[Dronny]

I have posted this previously and it still seems to me our biggest problem.
Our back four are set up to play closely together, meaning our full backs tuck in close to the central defenders. The midfield, with three defensive midfielders also play close to the back four. I understand the idea behind this is to create an impenetrable defended area, inviting opponents only to shoot from distance and trusting that if they do, our keeper can deal with the longer shots. We also appear to readily and willingly concede the midfield areas of the pitch.

The danger as I see it in playing this strategy is that we defend too small an area of the pitch and use too many players to do so. We also freely allow opponents too much free space to build up pressure and attack us.
Accordingly, we defend very deep, with a defensively set up midfield and the gap between our midfield and attack is stretched.

Because of the large gap, we are often forced to revert to using a long high ball to serve the forwards. On Saturday Adebayour won (I am tempted to say) nothing. In fact Ade (a) didn't bother to challenge the defender by jumping, (b) jumped far too early and the ball passed him or in some cases, (c) actually cowered down and ducked.
Our 2nd option of attack is to control and pass the ball out of defence. With the strategy we are playing, it is necessary to do this accurately with short high tempo passing. This allows the players to move forward as a unit and increase attacking pressure. On Saturday and often in previous games, we have done this far too slowly and opponents have easily set up a defense and closed down our options.
Our 3rd attacking option is to put the ball out to the flanks and attack down the line. This means that the midfield has to break out quickly in support. On Saturday and in previous games, our midfield are too far back to make up sufficient ground or move up slowly in order to retain a defensive shape should the attack break down.
We seem too reliant on the individual brillaince of our forwards. A penalty won through Johnson's attacking the Bolton line and a piece of wonderful skill by Adebayour gave us our 2 goals v Bolton and a determined chase by SWP v Stoke, our goal on Saturday.
I can only hope that Socrates is right...(but I am not sure)...that this is only temporary and at some point Mancini will unshackle our players and allow them the freedom to play further up the field.

I totally agree with what you have said there John, the issue with this system is as you point out, being over reliant on the brilliance of our forwards. It all starts to crumble when they are injured, absent or too knackered through chasing errant hoofed balls and closing down defender's.

As someone mentioned earlier, this could be a very interesting, season defining four games coming up.

[Bingo Lewis]

You know. I wouldn't so much mind the shite football if we were winning every game, but we're not.
Its shite footy, that gets shitter when we're losing.
Think somebody needs a word in their ear from somebody important as this needs nipping in the bud ASAP.

[CityFanFromRome]

You know. I wouldn't so much mind the shite football if we were winning every game, but we're not.
Its shite footy, that gets shitter when we're losing.
Think somebody needs a word in their ear from somebody important as this needs nipping in the bud ASAP.

Nobody wins every game, even Mourinho's Inter drew the last two in a row, to lesser teams like Parma and Napoli (even if they are pushing for a fourth spot so aren't that bad, really), although both games were away, but you'd expect Inter to win those, especially the Parma one, still they didn't.

And Even Barcelona have had their bad days at the office, even if they play the best football in the world imho, and didn't win some games, they were even knocked out of the Copa del Rey quite soon this season if I'm not mistaken.

[Bingo Lewis]

You know. I wouldn't so much mind the shite football if we were winning every game, but we're not.
Its shite footy, that gets shitter when we're losing.
Think somebody needs a word in their ear from somebody important as this needs nipping in the bud ASAP.

Nobody wins every game, even Mourinho's Inter drew the last two in a row, to lesser teams like Parma and Napoli (even if they are pushing for a fourth spot so aren't that bad, really), although both games were away, but you'd expect Inter to win those, especially the Parma one, still they didn't.

And Even Barcelona have had their bad days at the office, even if they play the best football in the world imho, and didn't win some games, they were even knocked out of the Copa del Rey quite soon this season if I'm not mistaken.

You're missing my point.
I'm saying if we're not gonna win every game, I want to see a decent performance trying to do it. Not what I'm seeing at the minute.
For what its worth, I think Mourinho plays shite football too. But he gets the results needed.

[Ted Hughes]

You know. I wouldn't so much mind the shite football if we were winning every game, but we're not.
Its shite footy, that gets shitter when we're losing.
Think somebody needs a word in their ear from somebody important as this needs nipping in the bud ASAP.

Nobody wins every game, even Mourinho's Inter drew the last two in a row, to lesser teams like Parma and Napoli (even if they are pushing for a fourth spot so aren't that bad, really), although both games were away, but you'd expect Inter to win those, especially the Parma one, still they didn't.

And Even Barcelona have had their bad days at the office, even if they play the best football in the world imho, and didn't win some games, they were even knocked out of the Copa del Rey quite soon this season if I'm not mistaken.

You're missing my point.
I'm saying if we're not gonna win every game, I want to see a decent performance trying to do it. Not what I'm seeing at the minute.
For what its worth, I think Mourinho plays shite football too. But he gets the results needed.

That's how I feel. I also worry that Mancini's Inter got torn a new arsehole when they played v our top 4 teams & that's presumably the finished article. If it's going to work he has to create something much better than Inter, not the same thing.

[CityFanFromRome]

You're missing my point.
I'm saying if we're not gonna win every game, I want to see a decent performance trying to do it. Not what I'm seeing at the minute.
For what its worth, I think Mourinho plays shite football too. But he gets the results needed.

I know what you were saying, which is why I made the example with Mourinho's Inter. I know he has a reputation of not playing the best football around but getting results, but as I pointed out, not even him wins all games, and he still doesn't produce a wonderful football to watch. Now, I'm not comparing Mancini to Mourinho because, really, the second is better than the first (at least, imho), but if Jose can draw and lose some games playing badly and not be crucified (he wasn't at Chelsea for what I know, he isn't by the Inter fans now although some Italian pundits do), why shouldn't Mancini be allowed the same?

To address Ted's point, I agree with you, but I think that goes more down to the Inter players not being used to play as fast and physically as the English teams do than tactics. After all, Mourinho, who has managed a top English club, didn't do much better against the rags last season, and we shall see what he does this week against Chelski.

[Ted Hughes]

You're missing my point.
I'm saying if we're not gonna win every game, I want to see a decent performance trying to do it. Not what I'm seeing at the minute.
For what its worth, I think Mourinho plays shite football too. But he gets the results needed.

I know what you were saying, which is why I made the example with Mourinho's Inter. I know he has a reputation of not playing the best football around but getting results, but as I pointed out, not even him wins all games, and he still doesn't produce a wonderful football to watch. Now, I'm not comparing Mancini to Mourinho because, really, the second is better than the first (at least, imho), but if Jose can draw and lose some games playing badly and not be crucified (he wasn't at Chelsea for what I know, he isn't by the Inter fans now although some Italian pundits do), why shouldn't Mancini be allowed the same?

To address Ted's point, I agree with you, but I think that goes more down to the Inter players not being used to play as fast and physically as the English teams do than tactics. After all, Mourinho, who has managed a top English club, didn't do much better against the rags last season, and we shall see what he does this week against Chelski.

No that's what I mean; without the players Mourinho or Mancini aren't going to win lots of stuff over here, just because they've had previous successes. They don't possess some incredible all conquering tactical knowledge that guarantees trophies, they're just good managers who have been fortunate enough to have access to good players. The better the players, the more they're likely to win.

I'd rather have Mancini than Mourinho but if we keep playing boring football I'd rather have Mourinho as I think he knows the league & will build a team that at least wins stuff even if it is boring.