***city v the ref, sorry v barca match thread***

[sheblue]

Is it just me and the beer or did Messi miss that penalty and rebound on purpose?

Good beer that,

[City64]

Fuck me that could have been a lot worse but it could have been so much better aswell . Puzzling first half , thought we started well but the vampire got a lucky break / bounce and we are one nil down , suddenly we are all over the fucking place , Vinny defending like an amature again ffs bang two nil down wtf ??? .Much better second half , great goal for us and suddenly Barca are all over the fucking place . We need something special in the Nou Camp , we need to be right on it !

[PrezIke]

Wow. I don't think I've ever seen Hart save a penalty before.

You are joking right?

[Cocacolajojo1]

You are joking right?

Am I?

[Blue2]

For me Pellegrini got it so wrong tonight. Whether you agree with going 4 in midfield or not, (I believe he should have gone with five), he picked the wrong personnel for the job.
He must be the only one in the Stadium who thought Milner and Fernando against their midfield would work.
He persisted with the system and seemed to be getting more joy and then takes off the two people that can actually pass to a City player. I found the tactics baffling to be honest. All of their players are comfortable on the ball and can pass it five yards. We had no one in midfield capable of doing that. And even our senior players at this stage in their European careers are incredibly naive and rash instead of being calm.
The good points.....few....but It could have been 1-3. Who knows what City turn up over there. They only seem to start playing seriously when things seem impossible.

Correct, he is clueless. Should have had 5 in midfield, Fernando not being one of them.

[getdressedmctavish]

C'mon Ted, It was clear Wilf was beyond awful after one minute. We should have lost by more and only luck we didn't, you or I could have headed that penalty save in and they cut us to shreds loads of times, without us being able to keep the ball, never mind create chances. Pellers is so naïve its unreal.And couldn't you see Clichés sending off coming? His legs were frozen with fear from the first minute, Again!But I'll repeat, 442 makes decent players look awful when the oppo has good players, a well honed system and a fluid five man midfield. How many times do we have to see it? If midfielders cant get close enough to each other they cant win tackles and they cant put passing triangles together to break teams down. And Dzeko will never make anything from 50 yard punts or get behind teams and produce a great cross. In the chumps league you have to start with a system that gives you control because conceding away goals is suicide.We are forever playing at the leading edge of our ability with disaster only a missed tackle or pass away. Fuck knows we've seen it often enough.Glorious defeat awaits. Lets see if he can organise a tight 20 minutes v the scousers !lol Mind you, some genius posted on Wookies that we should build a team round Wilf, ha

[Ted Hughes]

Fuck me that could have been a lot worse but it could have been so much better aswell . Puzzling first half , thought we started well but the vampire got a lucky break / bounce and we are one nil down , suddenly we are all over the fucking place , Vinny defending like an amature again ffs bang two nil down wtf ??? .Much better second half , great goal for us and suddenly Barca are all over the fucking place . We need something special in the Nou Camp , we need to be right on it !

It was a lucky break, but did Vinny really have to be so fucking hopelessly beaten by it ?

I think a fair few average Prem defenders would have coped with that. He is not right still yet, & we need him to be.

[City64]

Fuck me that could have been a lot worse but it could have been so much better aswell . Puzzling first half , thought we started well but the vampire got a lucky break / bounce and we are one nil down , suddenly we are all over the fucking place , Vinny defending like an amature again ffs bang two nil down wtf ??? .Much better second half , great goal for us and suddenly Barca are all over the fucking place . We need something special in the Nou Camp , we need to be right on it !

It was a lucky break, but did Vinny really have to be so fucking hopelessly beaten by it ?

I think a fair few average Prem defenders would have coped with that. He is not right still yet, & we need him to be.

The second goal more so Ted . Vinny lunged in , missed , then he is stuck miles out of position , we could all see the goal coming / unfolding just from that lunge . He needs to calm the fuck down and stay solid and keep the shape like he used to do .

[Ted Hughes]

C'mon Ted, It was clear Wilf was beyond awful after one minute. We should have lost by more and only luck we didn't, you or I could have headed that penalty save in and they cut us to shreds loads of times, without us being able to keep the ball, never mind create chances. Pellers is so naïve its unreal.And couldn't you see Clichés sending off coming? His legs were frozen with fear from the first minute, Again!But I'll repeat, 442 makes decent players look awful when the oppo has good players, a well honed system and a fluid five man midfield. How many times do we have to see it? If midfielders cant get close enough to each other they cant win tackles and they cant put passing triangles together to break teams down. And Dzeko will never make anything from 50 yard punts or get behind teams and produce a great cross. In the chumps league you have to start with a system that gives you control because conceding away goals is suicide.We are forever playing at the leading edge of our ability with disaster only a missed tackle or pass away. Fuck knows we've seen it often enough.Glorious defeat awaits. Lets see if he can organise a tight 20 minutes v the scousers !lol Mind you, some genius posted on Wookies that we should build a team round Wilf, ha

I'm sorry, I'm just not having it that Bony shouldn't be allowed the chance to see if he can nick a goal. We are going to whack the ball away under pressure, & we need presence to stop it coming straight back.

And we don't play 4-4-2. We only play that when Milner & Navas play wide.

And once more I'd like an example of any time we have played a decent side with Aguero on his own up front & done anything other than lose.

This five in the midfield being the answer to everything is bollocks. Drop Aguero, & play 6, then I'll have the conversation.

[Ted Hughes]

Fuck me that could have been a lot worse but it could have been so much better aswell . Puzzling first half , thought we started well but the vampire got a lucky break / bounce and we are one nil down , suddenly we are all over the fucking place , Vinny defending like an amature again ffs bang two nil down wtf ??? .Much better second half , great goal for us and suddenly Barca are all over the fucking place . We need something special in the Nou Camp , we need to be right on it !

It was a lucky break, but did Vinny really have to be so fucking hopelessly beaten by it ?

I think a fair few average Prem defenders would have coped with that. He is not right still yet, & we need him to be.

The second goal more so Ted . Vinny lunged in , missed , then he is stuck miles out of position , we could all see the goal coming / unfolding just from that lunge . He needs to calm the fuck down and stay solid and keep the shape like he used to do .

Yeah, I shouted 'what the fuck' at the tv screen when he came blundering out. I feared the worst. It threw everybody off the scent of what they were doing. If he'd just stayed in position, I doubt there would even have been a problem.

[Hazy2]

Stil in a tie, despite wasting 45 mins on some mad professor idea on 442 and pairing Milner with a wheelie bin. Football over complicated for fick knows reasons, they are shite at the back every ball into a channel and Sergio is in. Pellers stubborn cunt and sticking with formations for reasons only he knows. Just a general point what the fuck did we spend £100 mill on the two lads from snail football, one we trust and give him games he should never feature in, the other we don't trust but he has pace, Lampard WTF is this about, he in a 5 would have buried ione or two chances against close to as bad as at defending.

[Spurge]

Bony is a dud, he won't make it at city.

Wow....

thats one way of putting it, other ways might be more dismissive of what is without doubt a fucking ridiculous post at this moment in time.

[sheblue]

There's far too much made of formations. Some lads seem to think it's the be all and end all of everything. Unfortunately it's not that simple.

[Beefymcfc]

Absolute shite! We shit ourselves from the first minitue to the the last. Pellers tried but thisn't their managers call, he's just a stooge.

[Ted Hughes]

Stil in a tie, despite wasting 45 mins on some mad professor idea on 442 and pairing Milner with a wheelie bin. Football over complicated for fick knows reasons, they are shite at the back every ball into a channel and Sergio is in. Pellers stubborn cunt and sticking with formations for reasons only he knows. Just a general point what the fuck did we spend £100 mill on the two lads from snail football, one we trust and give him games he should never feature in, the other we don't trust but he has pace, Lampard WTF is this about, he in a 5 would have buried ione or two chances against close to as bad as at defending.

I don't know how the fuck anyone can say Milner wa better than Fernando first half. Or that there was any difference in formation between the two halves.

[Beefymcfc]

Stil in a tie, despite wasting 45 mins on some mad professor idea on 442 and pairing Milner with a wheelie bin. Football over complicated for fick knows reasons, they are shite at the back every ball into a channel and Sergio is in. Pellers stubborn cunt and sticking with formations for reasons only he knows. Just a general point what the fuck did we spend £100 mill on the two lads from snail football, one we trust and give him games he should never feature in, the other we don't trust but he has pace, Lampard WTF is this about, he in a 5 would have buried ione or two chances against close to as bad as at defending.

I don't know how the fuck anyone can say Milner wa better than Fernando first half. Or that there was any difference in formation between the two halves.

Fernando was absolutely gash, Milner was the same!!!

[iwasthere2012]

well the 2nd half was better, but as soon as the 50th minute when edin headed straight to the keeper with no one and I mean no one was near him and hes got a free header and passes back to the keeper I knew we would be running all 2nd half and getting nowhere. theres always next year

We had a couple of chances that could have levelled that game in the second half but we bottled it. You really need to be clinical in Europe, you don't get too many chances to put a team like Barca away. They keep possession very well when their tails are up. If we levelled that in the second half they would have shook. But we were under pressure right from the off, with the 442 and the personnel picked to do it.
Some are saying we should just play our own game and that is it. Well it is but not with Milner and Fernando in the middle. We have struggled against lesser teams that park the bus with better personnel in that 442 set up. How we thought we were ever going to have the ball against Barca when we can't string two passes together in the middle. I thought Milner was anonymous there and Fernando may well have a purpose in our team yet, but the guy is slow minded and awkward and is not technically good enough to do the job he was being asked to do tonight. I thought Fern1 coming on was right but at the expense of Nasri coming off, it was a waste, just to try and rectify what we all knew would be a problem . Silva-Nasri-Aguero, for me was the best hope we had of any link up play and Silva then went off meaning we hadn't any creativity left on the pitch. Bony was on for Dzeko at that stage but that was kind of useless when we are down to 10 men.
Barca work very hard when they don't have the ball. All of them. The reason I think we should have gone with 5 in the middle is we didn't have enough people comfortable enough on the ball to play against them in that formation and have the work rate also.
For the whole of the first half I thought the only players that looked like they could control a ball first time were Aguero and Nasri and Silva and even his passing was a bit off.
I think City will have a really good go at it in Barcelona, but it will leave us very vulnerable and can't see us keeping a clean sheet.
That first half will cost us again as it did last year. Putting ourselves under pressure by cocking up the first game each time, determines how you can play in the second game. I suppose miracles can happen, but we really stack the odds against ourselves.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Let's pick ourselves up for Liverpool on Sunday.

[sheblue]

Fernando was poor no doubt, he started the season ok and has been poor since his injury.

[Beefymcfc]

Fernando was poor no doubt, he started the season ok and has been poor since his injury.

On the pitch?//

[Hazy2]

Stil in a tie, despite wasting 45 mins on some mad professor idea on 442 and pairing Milner with a wheelie bin. Football over complicated for fick knows reasons, they are shite at the back every ball into a channel and Sergio is in. Pellers stubborn cunt and sticking with formations for reasons only he knows. Just a general point what the fuck did we spend £100 mill on the two lads from snail football, one we trust and give him games he should never feature in, the other we don't trust but he has pace, Lampard WTF is this about, he in a 5 would have buried ione or two chances against close to as bad as at defending.

I don't know how the fuck anyone can say Milner wa better than Fernando first half. Or that there was any difference in formation between the two halves.

Both were shite the point is where the fuck did that fucking stupid fuck up of plan come from. A disaster of an idea and gave them the ball with head up pass move. Crap idea which cost us the game along with terrified players, who have shown again they are short of the top draw needed. Btw they are average and will get smashed .