zuricity wrote:Spurge wrote:Douglas Higginbottom wrote:nottsblue wrote:How many saves did Courtois make? Apart from being gifted a chance which we accepted there were precious other opportunities. Simply not good enough
More than Caballero for certain. Sane one on one. Aguero near the end from Nolito pass. Stones missed two great chances from a central position about 6 yards out, one a header straight at Courtois. Kompany hit the bar with a looping header.
More chances than they did and we were far from great. thought Vinnie looked the business tonight and should play plenty to full test his fitness. Costa hardly had a kick.
Somehow defensively we make those little mistakes that cost us and with not scoring enough from our own chances we loose game we shouldn't. Willie had little to do tonight but should have saved the first and turned the pen away and not back to the taker. Slight deflection on the first but was he unlucky or not quite good enough?
The future is blue and very promising
Agree with a lot of this which is factual. The last bit I'm not so sure about. I still find myself scratching my head wondering if this is very promising. Chelsea over both games probably sums up why. We have taken 0 points but should have taken at least 4. Why 0? There is a lack of cutting edge about us. We create good positions on a regular basis and do too little with it. Forget all the defensive issues being talked about pep is right we are not ruthless enough in the last third. It's not one or two games its every game.
So pep has identified the problem, he's not been able to resolve it. He's carrying on playing his way in attempt to forcibly resolve it and he's not managed to do so. He won't bend or flex. So he has the summer to sort it. Who goes he decides, who comes he decides. Next season will tell us if pep is the man for the job or not.
I think Gabriel Jesus' injury has had a huge impact on our season.
It is seriously worrying if you are thinking that a 19 year old , always destined to arrive in January was supposed to be the fulcrum of any success this season !
Cannot disagree that we haven't really solved the problem of playing against a good massed defence. If I want to go the negative route I can think of plenty of reasons why we are where we are and it's clearly as Pep says we are not good enough in both boxes. And that's with a few attacking players who are the envy of most teams.I am thinking of Aguero,Silva, De Bruyne (yes not having the best time now) and more recently Sane and last but not least I would add Jesus.
THE biggest issue is our defence. Did we defend badly tonight against the champions elect ? I would say not overall but it doesn't reall matter as we made 2 maybe 3 mistakes and lost 2.1.
Pep/City won't panic, as a few too many fans are, and as long as we keep playing well, have a modicum of decent good fortune we will get 4th but that derby game is looking so so important right now.