Why Change The System?

[Beefymcfc]

OK, I understand this is Barca but from every single thing we've heard this season we will never change our attacking system; Pellers has been adamant on that. So why change tonight and try to contain them?

I was honestly expecting a really entertaining end-to-end game tonight and although it was entertaining for some (watching Barca's endless boring passing game) I found it tedious and unwarranted.

No doubt it would have been a little different if it weren't for the sending off but when a manager says we will never change but then goes against that then I have to say he's got it wrong.

[sheblue]

Boring passing game? Did I read that correctly?

[gillie]

3 words Beefster Bayern At Home.

[gillie]

Boring passing game? Did I read that correctly?

It is boring mate they never hurt us playing that game.It was just plain boring as I said to my wife during the game.

[Beefymcfc]

Boring passing game? Did I read that correctly?

It is boring mate they never hurt us playing that game.It was just plain boring as I said to my wife during the game.

Course it was mate, that's how they do it. Make you fall asleep and then hit you when you're just getting yourself tucked up.

Some people like that sort of shit but for me it bores me to death. At least we now play with a bit of cut and thrust which gives us a sense of what football is all about. Boring people to death is the new anti-football, we all know that.

Plus, I fucking hate Barca and their girly fallover Spanish antics.

[Sparklehorse]

Boring passing game? Did I read that correctly?

the game was exciting, the passing was boring, yes they're good at possession football and .....
My observations are that we should not have changed our approach, lescott should have played, i can understand Nasri was not fit for 90 mins, kolarov was tripe though. My biggest comment is Joe Hart, at this level of football you don't hoof the ball time and time again you look for someone. The reason he's doing this is he's shit scared of making a mistake, I'd have pants over hart any day of the week, Much better distributor of the ball and not a bad all round goalie.
I'm proud of the way we played overall and i certainly don't think this tie is over by any means. Barca needed a dubious penalty and us to be down to ten men to beat us.
Another observation, why the hell were ITV showing Mourinho in their pre match piece on us, what the hell has this game got to do with him Ffs !!

[MilnersJaw]

the game was exciting, the passing was boring, yes they're good at possession football and .....
My observations are that we should not have changed our approach, lescott should have played, i can understand Nasri was not fit for 90 mins, kolarov was tripe though. My biggest comment is Joe Hart, at this level of football you don't hoof the ball time and time again you look for someone. The reason he's doing this is he's shit scared of making a mistake, I'd have pants over hart any day of the week, Much better distributor of the ball and not a bad all round goalie.
I'm proud of the way we played overall and i certainly don't think this tie is over by any means. Barca needed a dubious penalty and us to be down to ten men to beat us.
Another observation, why the hell were ITV showing Mourinho in their pre match piece on us, what the hell has this game got to do with him Ffs !!

Not to mention his poor effort on the second goal.

[Bridge'srightfoot]

I think in a way the excitement surrounding this game and the bigging up of Barcelona may have contributed to our own downfall. I mean this is a side who recently got out played and lost 3-2 at home to Valencia. We offered them far too much respect and rather than playing our normal game we set out to stop them. I love Kolarov but him at leftmid? No way. From our line up it was clear we came to try and keep things tight and nick a goal but I can't help feel had he we gone for it we could have won this and quite comfortably too.

It was clear that Negredo was clearly struggling on his own and needed a partner or at the very least Jovetic or Nasri running off him but he became far too isolated.

[Blue Since 76]

My biggest comment is Joe Hart, at this level of football you don't hoof the ball time and time again you look for someone. The reason he's doing this is he's shit scared of making a mistake, I'd have pants over hart any day of the week, Much better distributor of the ball and not a bad all round goalie.

Who exactly did you want him to give it to when all 10 men were marked? The one time he tried throwing it out it was obvious what would happen and Sanchez duly stole the ball ahead of Clichy and was in. The only complaint I'd have was the one he punched in the first half when it looked an easy catch

[bayblue]

We've lost three big home games this year.
In the first two we were annihilated by Bayern and well beaten by Chelsea.
In both we were outfought and outthought, ripped to shreds, and conceded way too many chances.


At least in this game, until the sending off, we had hardly conceded a chance, and after the first fifteen minutes had started to create our own.
If we hadn't strengthened our left side then they would have ripped us up through there, Sanchez is electric, Alves is always bombing on and Messi drifts to the left.
So , I thought we had to adjust to prevent this and on the whole we did well. I think if Milner hadn't been banned he would have been there in place of Kolarov as he is unfortunately not a left mid in quality.

Just before their goal I was looking down below me seeing Nasri, Garcia and Dzeko warming up and actually felt we had a real chance of bringing fresh legs on and winning it.

So, whilst I'm gutted at the result I think MP showed he had learned from our two big previous defeats and were it not for some bad refereeing decisions there is no way we would have been two nil down at half time of this tie.

We aren't out of it though by any means. We can score past these guys; we will have Serge back and if we get one then I'd back us to get another.

Come on you Blues.

[Goataldo]

tend to agree with gillie and bayblue - it was fair enough imo to change things a bit, make sure we didn't get run ragged against opposition who are much better than most teams we play, and then having once established a foothold, maybe change things up a bit, give them even more to think about.

It was working ok too, up to a point.....

[zabbadabbado]

duplicate sorry

[zabbadabbado]

No idea why he changed the system tonight.

I think their defense looks very suspect and can be got at. It would have made perfect sense to me, for us to play to our strength, which would have been to attack tonight. All the sound bites emanating from Pellegrini suggested he was a man off principal, and he would stick to his attacking philosophy.

Maybe he has been left with a bit off an inferiority complex when it comes to Real Madrid and Barcelona from his constant defeats to both sides as manager off Malaga in La Liga. It was an alien formation that I felt impacted on our game, and it actually helped their game. Gone was our high pressing tempo game, replaced by just sitting back contented to concede ground and possession. Not sure why we did this against a good passing side, that will pass you to death if allowed to.

I think Vinnie's sentiments ring true, they are not the best side we have met. I think the defeat was self inflicted by our manager negatively and unnecessarily changing our formation. I think his changes did impact on the team and their self belief going in to this game. I think we showed Barcelona far to much respect and were wrongly in awe off them early on, it is a missed opportunity for me. Was very telling that our performance improved drastically when we went to 10 men, I was left thinking what if we had started like that,gutted.

We have had a great season thus far, we still have the chance of a history making domestic treble. But I still have these niggling doubts about Pellegrini credentials to take us on to the next level mainly because off the defeats when it matters, we have lost to Bayern Munich, Chelsea Barcelona all at home as well as struggling against some shite lower placed Premier League sides, worryingly games where we could have laid down a marker. We still have some very tricky away days in the Premier League, he needs to show that he really does have the tactical nous to take us on to greatness. I am still not convinced he has what it takes yet.Winning the League Cup would be a good start at allaying my fears.

[Goataldo]

No idea why he changed the system tonight.

I think their defense looks very suspect and can be got at. It would have made perfect sense to me, for us to play to our strength, which would have been to attack tonight. All the sound bites emanating from Pellegrini suggested he was a man off principal, and he would stick to his attacking philosophy.

Maybe he has been left with a bit off an inferiority complex when it comes to Real Madrid and Barcelona from his constant defeats to both sides as manager off Malaga in La Liga. It was an alien formation that I felt impacted on our game, and it actually helped their game. Gone was our high pressing tempo game, replaced by just sitting back contented to concede ground and possession. Not sure why we did this against a good passing side, that will pass you to death if allowed to.

I think Vinnie's sentiments ring true, they are not the best side we have met. I think the defeat was self inflicted by our manager negatively and unnecessarily changing our formation. I think his changes did impact on the team and their self belief going in to this game. I think we showed Barcelona far to much respect and were wrongly in awe off them early on, it is a missed opportunity for me. Was very telling that our performance improved drastically when we went to 10 men, I was left thinking what if we had started like that,gutted.

We have had a great season thus far, we still have the chance of a history making domestic treble. But I still have these niggling doubts about Pellegrini credentials to take us on to the next level mainly because off the defeats when it matters, we have lost to Bayern Munich, Chelsea Barcelona all at home as well as struggling against some shite lower placed Premier League sides, worryingly games where we could have laid down a marker. We still have some very tricky away days in the Premier League, he needs to show that he really does have the tactical nous to take us on to greatness. I am still not convinced he has what it takes yet.Winning the League Cup would be a good start at allaying my fears.

You make a persuasive argument. I can kind of understand why he did it though. Which makes claims that we will only attackattackattack a bit daft. For me, in hindsight, of course I would have loved to see us press them all over and try and tear them a new arsehole as soon as we had possession. Maybe we're still not there psychologically, I know I didn't expect to win (not suggesting I may have psychokinetically affected the team, like, just in case). The pride they can take in the way we played and attacked with ten men ,will hopefully do wonders for our mentality. Not as if we can't afford to sit back all game away is it!?

[zabbadabbado]

No idea why he changed the system tonight.

I think their defense looks very suspect and can be got at. It would have made perfect sense to me, for us to play to our strength, which would have been to attack tonight. All the sound bites emanating from Pellegrini suggested he was a man off principal, and he would stick to his attacking philosophy.

Maybe he has been left with a bit off an inferiority complex when it comes to Real Madrid and Barcelona from his constant defeats to both sides as manager off Malaga in La Liga. It was an alien formation that I felt impacted on our game, and it actually helped their game. Gone was our high pressing tempo game, replaced by just sitting back contented to concede ground and possession. Not sure why we did this against a good passing side, that will pass you to death if allowed to.

I think Vinnie's sentiments ring true, they are not the best side we have met. I think the defeat was self inflicted by our manager negatively and unnecessarily changing our formation. I think his changes did impact on the team and their self belief going in to this game. I think we showed Barcelona far to much respect and were wrongly in awe off them early on, it is a missed opportunity for me. Was very telling that our performance improved drastically when we went to 10 men, I was left thinking what if we had started like that,gutted.

We have had a great season thus far, we still have the chance of a history making domestic treble. But I still have these niggling doubts about Pellegrini credentials to take us on to the next level mainly because off the defeats when it matters, we have lost to Bayern Munich, Chelsea Barcelona all at home as well as struggling against some shite lower placed Premier League sides, worryingly games where we could have laid down a marker. We still have some very tricky away days in the Premier League, he needs to show that he really does have the tactical nous to take us on to greatness. I am still not convinced he has what it takes yet.Winning the League Cup would be a good start at allaying my fears.

You make a persuasive argument. I can kind of understand why he did it though. Which makes claims that we will only attackattackattack a bit daft. For me, in hindsight, of course I would have loved to see us press them all over and try and tear them a new arsehole as soon as we had possession. Maybe we're still not there psychologically, I know I didn't expect to win (not suggesting I may have psychokinetically affected the team, like, just in case). The pride they can take in the way we played and attacked with ten men ,will hopefully do wonders for our mentality. Not as if we can't afford to sit back all game away is it!?

You never know this defeat could prove to be the catalyst.

Point being i don't think we would have gone to the Nou Camp looking to play an attacking game prior to this defeat.Now i suspect we will just go and play our natural game and see what happens there.Wouldn't it be ironic if those tactics get us an early goal and send us on to a famous victory.You never know,we can only hope.

[phips]

absolutely nothing wrong with the system. Barca had one chance on goal with Iniesta moving across the box but Yaya stole the ball. Barca had done nothing to trouble us up until the card.

the loss is 90% on Demichelis' shoulders and 10% on Navas' for his awful dive.

[sheblue]

I still dont think it was boring. Never find good passing, ball retention, control and movement boring.
We defended quite well for most of the game so maybe that made them look boring to some.

[Hazy2]

It nearly paid off TBH, Kun is our only XFactor when it comes to the games like last night. Barca are beatable and IMHO will be found out .

[bayblue]

It was the second goal that was the potential killer.
If we had been going to them having played with ten men for over a third of the game and only one nil down then I'd almost be confident.
Not seen too much comment on that goal and haven't had chance to see replays on TV, at the time in the ground it felt like they were continually exposing us down that side once We were down to ten and Kola withdrawn.

[Ted Hughes]

Strange how many people think our purpose last night was to stop Barca having a shot.

If that was why we were all there, then you are dead right, we almost managed it for 45 mins & Barca had no penetration or ideas of any kind. As Beefy said, it was fucking boring, nothing football. Then we got beat.

I thought the idea was to try & take a lead to their place for the 2nd leg.

But clearly, you lot believe we are not good enough to challenge Barca & it's a major achievement just to stand in a line kicking the ball away for 45 mins. This is what the media has been asking for too, rather than this attacking shite we keep serving up.

Well done City.