***City v Bruges (A) CL GS|Official Match Thread***

[Mase]

Fuck me, Klopp complaining already!

Wind? Length of grass?

[sheblue]

Excellent performance.
Some great stuff played tonight.

[Bluemoon4610]

Speechless

It’s beyond embarrassing isn’t it - especially as he’s whining like a bitch to play more .

Prove you're worth playing in the time you're given. Not just him but anyone. Should be a club motto.

He's just using logic. He needs 10 chances to score 1 goal. He gets more chances the more minutes he plays. So more minutes = more chances = more goals.........easy peasy!

[nottsblue]

Fuck me, Klopp complaining already!

Toothache?

[Beefymcfc]

Fuck me, Klopp complaining already!

Toothache?

All that gurning.

[Beefymcfc]

Speechless

It’s beyond embarrassing isn’t it - especially as he’s whining like a bitch to play more .

Prove you're worth playing in the time you're given. Not just him but anyone. Should be a club motto.

He's just using logic. He needs 10 chances to score 1 goal. He gets more chances the more minutes he plays. So more minutes = more chances = more goals.........easy peasy!

TBF, I’m not sure if he’s even doing that. At least he’s still giving 100% and adding value with the assist and turning players.

[s1ty m]

Masterclass. Again, Cancelo...utter trash as a defender, he clearly isn't one and is rash, powderpuff and easily beaten by almost anything. However, really good going forward. Like, really good. Excellent left-sided midfield player, a defender he isn't. Crazy.

[Nick]

Albert reira ?

[Nigels Tackle]

one of best displays i’ve seen us give
total football 2.0

[salford city]

one of best displays i’ve seen us give
total football 2.0

Agreed watched it in my local which is a red shite boozer. Their comments reminded me of myself back in the day with them. These ate shite arent they - you should be smashing shit like this. Fact is we played very fucking well and someone is going to get a fucking hammering soon. So many chances in that first 20 minutes. Loved Palmer's finish - total class from the lad and bodrs well for the future

[Nigels Tackle]

one of best displays i’ve seen us give
total football 2.0

Agreed watched it in my local which is a red shite boozer. Their comments reminded me of myself back in the day with them. These ate shite arent they - you should be smashing shit like this. Fact is we played very fucking well and someone is going to get a fucking hammering soon. So many chances in that first 20 minutes. Loved Palmer's finish - total class from the lad and bodrs well for the future

the goals walker and cancelo scored last night summed it up. beautiful stuff.

[Mase]

BBC gave MOTM to Hendry for them. Nothing to see here.

[johnny crossan]

Turncoat JPB feeling a little wistful perhaps
Manchester City’s attack is supreme, complete and one-of-a-kind

Kyle Walker, Riyad Mahrez, Phil Foden, Manchester City

By Jack Pitt-Brooke Oct 20, 2021 15
Last week was dominated by talk that Phil Foden had to play in central midfield for club and country to make the most of his talents. On Tuesday evening in Belgium, he almost played up front for Manchester City and they had their best attacking performance of the season, tearing through a very good Club Bruges team time after time after time.

Foden would be brilliant wherever he played but it certainly did not feel, watching this game, that City would be a better team if they replaced him with a No 9 who ran less but scored more.

The 21-year-old exemplifies everything good about this City team — pressing, speed, tactical flexibility, technical skill — in a way that no old-fashioned target man ever could. This was a victory for a system and an approach (and the financial power to realise it), rather than for any one individual, but that does not mean that signing a big-name striker to put in this team would make it any better.

The way that we talk about football in this country means that every Manchester City performance is put into one of two categories: either it is taken as proof that City were wrong not to sign a striker this summer or as proof that they were right not to.

So when City stumbled at home to Southampton in the Premier League, that was presented as proof that if they just had someone who could stick the ball in the back of the net, they might win more. And when City put in half of a complete performance at Paris Saint-Germain away — pressing well, passing well, but just missing out in the final third and losing 2-0 — that was seen as convincing proof that a centre-forward would have won City the match.

Maybe, maybe not.

There have been at least as many games this season — such as in Bruges on Tuesday evening — that make the opposite argument: that the way that City play, with all that intensity and movement and fluidity, is what makes them such a dangerous team.

It is not one particular individual that makes City what they are but the combination of all of them. City have obviously bought very good players over the years but when they play as they did in Belgium, they are more than the sum of their parts. Every player’s understanding of his own role is useful but it is the understanding of the movements and timings of their team-mates that allows City to play their unique brand of incisive combination football.

That was the story against Bruges on Tuesday evening. You might not call this City’s best performance of the season, given the opposition, although Bruges are a very effective, competitive team who were made to look ordinary by City. This display might not have been as impressive as they were when they won 1-0 at Chelsea, for example, and the game was not as thrilling as the 2-2 draw at Anfield but this was certainly the match this season when City have created the most and best goalscoring chances.

Cole Palmer, Manchester City
Teenager Cole Palmer scored City’s fourth goal in Belgium – his first in the Champions League (Photo: Peter De Voecht/Photo News via Getty Images)
City finished this game with 4.12 expected goals (excluding penalties), their highest score in this metric all season. Their previous best of 4.03 xG came in the 5-0 home win over Arsenal on August 28. Go back through all the Premier League and Champions League games during Pep Guardiola’s tenure — dating back to August 2016 — and this was City’s seventh-highest mark on this metric. It was their second-highest recorded in an away game (behind their trip to Brighton in July 2020) and their second-highest in the Champions League (behind a big home win over Borussia Monchengladbach in Guardiola’s first season).

The point is that for all the talk that City should have bought a big-name striker this summer, they are not exactly struggling to find their rhythm this season. They are playing better attacking football than they have done at almost any point under Guardiola and even in games when they do not rack up the goals — like Chelsea away — they are playing pressing football so intense that they smother the opposition.

It is easy enough to imagine that if they just stuck Harry Kane or Cristiano Ronaldo up front, they would convert more chances. Maybe that is true in a very limited sense. But watching Kane and Ronaldo play this season, it is hard to imagine that City would be a better team with them in there. They would not create as many chances because they would not have such integrated movement up front. And they would not press as well, which would really undermine everything else they tried to do on the pitch.

It was difficult to watch Foden up front for City on Tuesday (with support through the middle from Kevin De Bruyne) and argue that they would have been better off with a good old-fashioned target man or a specialist poacher. He led the press for City, keeping Bruges on the front foot throughout, while also being able to drop deep and play brilliant forward passes. He had already found Jack Grealish and Joao Cancelo, darting in from the left, before his perfect assist for Cancelo after 30 minutes.

It might not have been a conventional run for the full-back to make — in behind the opposition defence, straight towards goal — but this is a City team which always tries to keep surprising its opponents, and Kyle Walker, in the opposite full-back role, tested Bruges with his own underlapping runs into the box, scoring City’s third from De Bruyne’s pass early in the second half.

Those were just two of the five goals and if you watch the game back, you will see dozens of moves that either created good chances or were flagged offside. Every one of them was intricate and imaginative, cutting through the defence, playing into the space, creating a good chance to score.

This is the type of football that Guardiola has always wanted to play at City and right now, his team are playing at least as well as they did even last season, when they won the title. They did not have a big name No 9 then and they do not have one now. The most curious thing is that people are still surprised.

(Top photo: Kurt Desplenter/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)


Jack Pitt-Brooke is a football journalist for The Athletic based in London. He joined in 2019 after nine years at The Independent.

I used to record games regularly years ago and I remember recording and rewatching so many of Pep’s peak Barcelona team’s games.

I don’t really record games or have the time to rewatch like I used to, but this City performance, even against an overmatched team, was one of the very few times I felt that old instinct of “got to record this one”. Brugge’s pressing was more than competent and quite intense, and City were just cutting through it and finding all the angles for attack over and over.

Yes, they overelaborated a few times, but that’s the sign of a confident team humming, even after bad giveaways or overly fanciful exchanges, possession was won back quickly. At one point as another attack was building, I thought: “Mahrez/KDB/Foden on the right, Grealish and Cancelo on the left, and Bernardo buzzing around with Rodri as the glue, how the hell can Brugge manage”. As it turns out, they didn’t.

[Harry Dowd scored]

Been busy not had much time for posting, but I have to say I thought we played some lovely football last night, Foden excellent again, we are some team when we are on that form, some may say the opposing team was not high quality but they drew with PSG and beat Leipzig.
Really happy with that performance, still wished we had a clinical striker though.

[sheblue]

Been busy not had much time for posting, but I have to say I thought we played some lovely football last night, Foden excellent again, we are some team when we are on that form, some may say the opposing team was not high quality but they drew with PSG and beat Leipzig.
Really happy with that performance, still wished we had a clinical striker though.

Now there is an idea.

[Sideshow Bob]

further to the point, i watched dortmund with haaland up front get absolutely humiliated by ajax last night. yes, haaland was a constant menace on the rare occasion when dortmund could break or go long, but at all other times they were pressed to death, outnumbered and outworked all over the pitch. i'd still love for us to get haaland, because I think pep could make it work. however, i'm not 100% sure having a world class no 9 would make up for weakening of our midfield.

[PrezIke]

Masterclass. Again, Cancelo...utter trash as a defender, he clearly isn't one and is rash, powderpuff and easily beaten by almost anything. However, really good going forward. Like, really good. Excellent left-sided midfield player, a defender he isn't. Crazy.

I can see why some think Cancelo is poor as a defender but I don't think Cancelo is utter trash.

Seems he's mostly just not as consistent or focused (especially on the left IMO), as I have seen him do well in some key moments.

In fact, in the same Liverpool match where he was criticised widely for one of their goals, he also made a fantastic tackle that the match commentator noted in my feed earlier in the game that was vital to preventing a scoring chance. Yet, no one seems to remember that.

Defenders are almost always remembered for errors, we know, and not as much as for when they do well.

Cancelo pushes VERY far forward and is focused on attacking (as is why he is in the team) so this is part of the issue. Whilst he is also close to 2 footed, he is also not as good with defending, based on my observations, when on the left, where he is playing far more and to mostly great effect.

Notice the cries for a left back that have lasted AGES have disappeared? I have.

However, I will say he's shown to being prone to errors and switching off, whilst also being someone who is capable of defending well.

[PrezIke]

Otherwise, fantastic performance from many in the team.

Wonder what will happen with Palmer.

I believe I heard on the Totally Football show pod that they hear Pep may concede to let him go on loan somewhere, as he can't get the game time with us at the moment.

Not sure if they mean for this season. Seems so. Baring Sterling off in some form in January I could see him going then to a Championship or even PL side, but I would worry about the way he would be handled.

Maybe to a club like Brentford, or Leeds, who play similarly enough, but maybe better to go to a good Championship side. Coventry perhaps?

[nottsblue]

Otherwise, fantastic performance from many in the team.

Wonder what will happen with Palmer.

I believe I heard on the Totally Football show pod that they hear Pep may concede to let him go on loan somewhere, as he can't get the game time with us at the moment.

Not sure if they mean for this season. Seems so. Baring Sterling off in some form in January I could see him going then to a Championship or even PL side, but I would worry about the way he would be handled.

Maybe to a club like Brentford, or Leeds, who play similarly enough, but maybe better to go to a good Championship side. Coventry perhaps?

Be truly amazed if he goes out on loan. Pep has said some quote about good food in the kitchen taking time. Which I take to mean he will likely follow a similar trajectory to Foden in his integration into the first team.

Which looking at how Foden now performs is probably the correct call

[Mase]

Otherwise, fantastic performance from many in the team.

Wonder what will happen with Palmer.

I believe I heard on the Totally Football show pod that they hear Pep may concede to let him go on loan somewhere, as he can't get the game time with us at the moment.

Not sure if they mean for this season. Seems so. Baring Sterling off in some form in January I could see him going then to a Championship or even PL side, but I would worry about the way he would be handled.

Maybe to a club like Brentford, or Leeds, who play similarly enough, but maybe better to go to a good Championship side. Coventry perhaps?

Be truly amazed if he goes out on loan. Pep has said some quote about good food in the kitchen taking time. Which I take to mean he will likely follow a similar trajectory to Foden in his integration into the first team.

Which looking at how Foden now performs is probably the correct call

I believe Pep said last night that we need to be patient with him, like we were with Foden. Looks like he’ll follow a similar path to Phil.