*** city v stoke official match thread ***

[Mase]

I didn't want the rotation any more than anyone else, but I'm not sure anyone was worse last night than Sterling was at Sunderland, especially in the first half. His deflected cross was the sort of luck we lacked last night. The problem for me was our lack of strength in depth. No replacement for Silva and we know Navas is not the answer.

KDB was a hell of a lot worse last night than Sterling was against Sunderland. Navas was just there, at least when Sterling is playing poorly, or his touch is letting him down, or whatever, he still commits defenders which opens up space or he makes runs that need to be tracked which also opens up space for others to exploit. He is integral to how we're playing this season, just as much if not more than Silva is.

I know Sterling is having a good season. He looked stale at Sunderland so giving him a rest was no reason for our poor performance. For all the good stuff he has done, he did need a break imo. That was my point.

Didn't he set the first goal up mate?

[South Stand Balti]

I didn't want the rotation any more than anyone else, but I'm not sure anyone was worse last night than Sterling was at Sunderland, especially in the first half. His deflected cross was the sort of luck we lacked last night. The problem for me was our lack of strength in depth. No replacement for Silva and we know Navas is not the answer.

KDB was a hell of a lot worse last night than Sterling was against Sunderland. Navas was just there, at least when Sterling is playing poorly, or his touch is letting him down, or whatever, he still commits defenders which opens up space or he makes runs that need to be tracked which also opens up space for others to exploit. He is integral to how we're playing this season, just as much if not more than Silva is.

I know Sterling is having a good season. He looked stale at Sunderland so giving him a rest was no reason for our poor performance. For all the good stuff he has done, he did need a break imo. That was my point.

Didn't he set the first goal up mate?

Yes, I did say that in my first post. It was a deflected cross, the bit of luck we could have done with last night. He repeatedly lost possession though. I thought it was ok to rest him last night. He's played a lot of footie recently. We made 3 significant changes last night. I'm pretty sure u rightly said it was a crap team prior to kick off. My point is the players who fill in are not up to it. The squad needs some improvement as we need to rotate at this stage of the season when we have 5 games in 2 weeks. We should have the squad to do that.

[Mase]

I didn't want the rotation any more than anyone else, but I'm not sure anyone was worse last night than Sterling was at Sunderland, especially in the first half. His deflected cross was the sort of luck we lacked last night. The problem for me was our lack of strength in depth. No replacement for Silva and we know Navas is not the answer.

KDB was a hell of a lot worse last night than Sterling was against Sunderland. Navas was just there, at least when Sterling is playing poorly, or his touch is letting him down, or whatever, he still commits defenders which opens up space or he makes runs that need to be tracked which also opens up space for others to exploit. He is integral to how we're playing this season, just as much if not more than Silva is.

I know Sterling is having a good season. He looked stale at Sunderland so giving him a rest was no reason for our poor performance. For all the good stuff he has done, he did need a break imo. That was my point.

Didn't he set the first goal up mate?

Yes, I did say that in my first post. It was a deflected cross, the bit of luck we could have done with last night. He repeatedly lost possession though. I thought it was ok to rest him last night. He's played a lot of footie recently. We made 3 significant changes last night. I'm pretty sure u rightly said it was a crap team prior to kick off. My point is the players who fill in are not up to it. The squad needs some improvement as we need to rotate at this stage of the season when we have 5 games in 2 weeks. We should have the squad to do that.

Agreed mate.

[Peter Doherty (AGAIG)]

Proper shit last night.

[branny]

Kev Won't play that bad again. Sane was extremely poor as well.

Big players let us down.

Kev was just as bad last Wednesday.

Against Huddersfield? Not a chance, he was well below par last night, easily one of his worst overall performances in a City shirt ( until he moved wide ) but he was decent against Huddersfield following a slow enough start to that one.

His passing and decision making were not up to his usual standard in my opinion.

[aaron bond]

Kev Won't play that bad again. Sane was extremely poor as well.

Big players let us down.

Kev was just as bad last Wednesday.

Against Huddersfield? Not a chance, he was well below par last night, easily one of his worst overall performances in a City shirt ( until he moved wide ) but he was decent against Huddersfield following a slow enough start to that one.

His passing and decision making were not up to his usual standard in my opinion.

As Pep wanted to rotate the squad against Stoke it would have been better to put KDB on the bench instead of Silva.

Silva, Sane, Sterling and Aguero are all in great form. There was no need to stop that momentum. We saw the difference Silva made when he came on.

If both him and Sterling had started we would have won the game comfortably. Pep fucked up.

[Hazy2]

we had enough efforts to have won, we also have the quality to do better. Move on it's gone....

[Sideshow Bob]

it is suicide to start navas and sagna together. neither offers any attacking threat whatsoever, so our right side becomes toothless and opponents can overload on our left. we've seen the same pattern many times before!

[Justified logic]

it is suicide to start navas and sagna together. neither offers any attacking threat whatsoever, so our right side becomes toothless and opponents can overload on our left. we've seen the same pattern many times before!

And yet we saw it again on Wednesday. A right royal fuck up by Guardiola. And a left one with Clichy bombing down the wing and then passing the ball back as soon as he receives it.

[DoomMerchant]

The team put out by Pep should have had plenty of incentive to win.

The fucknuts didn't. It's not Pep's fault that no one can fucking score for shit and that our former Fortress at home is now a yurt where we do Yoga at HT.

cheers

[Sideshow Bob]

it is suicide to start navas and sagna together. neither offers any attacking threat whatsoever, so our right side becomes toothless and opponents can overload on our left. we've seen the same pattern many times before!

And yet we saw it again on Wednesday. A right royal fuck up by Guardiola. And a left one with Clichy bombing down the wing and then passing the ball back as soon as he receives it.

agreed. clichy does my head in when he does that. and he can't defend, so what does he offer us that maffeo/angelino can't??

[Tokyo Blue]

it is suicide to start navas and sagna together. neither offers any attacking threat whatsoever, so our right side becomes toothless and opponents can overload on our left. we've seen the same pattern many times before!

And yet we saw it again on Wednesday. A right royal fuck up by Guardiola. And a left one with Clichy bombing down the wing and then passing the ball back as soon as he receives it.

agreed. clichy does my head in when he does that. and he can't defend, so what does he offer us that maffeo/angelino can't??

Maffeo is a right back.

[Wooders]

it is suicide to start navas and sagna together. neither offers any attacking threat whatsoever, so our right side becomes toothless and opponents can overload on our left. we've seen the same pattern many times before!

And yet we saw it again on Wednesday. A right royal fuck up by Guardiola. And a left one with Clichy bombing down the wing and then passing the ball back as soon as he receives it.

there were large pockets of space in the centre right of the park that didn't get exploited once - they just either ran into groups of stoke players or passed it to the most heavily marked player every single time down the right hand side - when they weren't doing that they were passing the ball to stoke players
i hate navas but this must be because they were following the managers instructions - a pep cockup imo (apart from the passing the ball to the oppo!)