Douglas Higginbottom wrote:All the stuff about playing the ball too centrally is of course correct but what surprised me was how ineffective Nasri and Silva were.Silva was ok in the first half but disappeared and for me the pair of them got themselves too far forward too early.Too often they weren't the ones doing the creative work leading into the box and as they got forward they got marked tightly and made everything congested.
Then of course if Barry and Yaya puyshed a little high up there was great danger if we lost the ball.Let's face it Barry and Yaya are not the fastest in recovering.I do think Nigel would have read the game better and sat better which in turn would likely have brought Nasri and especially Silva back to the ball more to the team's benefit.
This is spot on Doug. It seemed to me that Nasri, Silva & Aguero were feeling the pace and all were too far forward too often. It reminded me of the old Hughes/Sven days when the defenders were left with no passing options as Yaya & Barry became overworked because they were being left on their own. They in turn stopped helping create as they tired & it led to the kind of cock up we saw for their goal. In hindsight, Micah & Clichy plus another central midf player instead of Nasri would have been a better attack.
We had no width & played like Arsenal. Zabba kept going inside when Dzeko wanted a cross. We were doing ok early on though & looked a bit raggish in our pressure play. They would have kept it going with width & won by 4 or 5 though. We need to learn that or sides will pick us off with that many attackers in the team.
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