Man City 6- Leicester 3 post match thread.

[jmono84]

My take on the first peno was how the ref could watch that replay, from a terrible angle, not zoomed in and watch it twice and decided he saw a CLEAR AND OBVIOUS foul when in real time he had a much clearer view. No chance would that go the other way around against the big 6.

 

I’ve had enough of these pussy officials. Need to get guys in who can make strong common sense decisions.

 

If I was in charge I would overturn Sterling’s peno too, it’s a dive and horrible to see.

[Hoopla10]

3 hours ago, Col city fan said:

Completely right 

I do have to laff. I’ve had people pummelling me for months for suggesting that Amartey isn’t good enough and especially when not playing alongside Evans. So many posters suggesting he’s fine as a squad player, to bring in when needed.

Now that we’ve conceded 6 goals in a single game, then suddenly both he and Vestergaard were apparently never going to be good enough anyway and that conceding 6 goals was ‘only to be expected’!

Absolute classic FT this

😉

 

Is that true? Armartey is a squad player and I think everbody can agree Vestergaard is not good. Does that seem ideal? Out of curiousity, when was the last time those two played as a partnership in that 2 CB role? On top of that, against Manchester City? The numbers thrown about on here of our loss 9-0 10-0 etc... so maybe saying 'only to be expected' is unfair since we expected more... well done our defense  

[BKLFox]

54 minutes ago, Col city fan said:

This is the usual argument trotted out about Amartey. I tend to look at the bigger picture in terms of how disorganised the defence looks when he plays. Amartey and Vestie are not young kids being drafted in. They have Premiership and international experience between them, yet our fans shit themselves when they play together.

Which says it all really

Fair play to looking at the bigger picture Col as it’s not something many do on here, the fact that we are still talking and pointing fingers at BR or individuals about losing against the fully fit English champions when we are having to field patched up reserve & knackered players proves the point.
There will be the same discussion come 22:00 tomorrow night which will baffle me as I’ve already written that game off and looking to Norwich after a well earned day off, as I really do see the bigger picture.

 

With regards to the 2 CBs you mention yes they should be doing more but they are our 4th & 5th choice options and probably weren’t planned on being paired together, I think you pair any clubs 4th and 5th choice options together they will leak goals…+ doesn’t help with midfielders having to cover defensive slots.

[Frank Large's Black Book]

 

10 minutes ago, Hoopla10 said:

Is that true? Armartey is a squad player and I think everbody can agree Vestergaard is not good. Does that seem ideal? Out of curiousity, when was the last time those two played as a partnership in that 2 CB role? On top of that, against Manchester City? The numbers thrown about on here of our loss 9-0 10-0 etc... so maybe saying 'only to be expected' is unfair since we expected more... well done our defense  

 

Not quite everyone according the the Murky:

 

Excellent Jannik Vestergaard and Kasper Schmiechel's distribution praised by Pep Guardiola

 

 

[Pliskin]

5 minutes ago, Frank Large's Black Book said:

 

 

Not quite everyone according the the Murky:

 

Excellent Jannik Vestergaard and Kasper Schmiechel's distribution praised by Pep Guardiola

 

 

Is that because they kept giving the ball back to them! 

[Guest Col city fan]

28 minutes ago, BKLFox said:

Fair play to looking at the bigger picture Col as it’s not something many do on here, the fact that we are still talking and pointing fingers at BR or individuals about losing against the fully fit English champions when we are having to field patched up reserve & knackered players proves the point.
There will be the same discussion come 22:00 tomorrow night which will baffle me as I’ve already written that game off and looking to Norwich after a well earned day off, as I really do see the bigger picture.

 

With regards to the 2 CBs you mention yes they should be doing more but they are our 4th & 5th choice options and probably weren’t planned on being paired together, I think you pair any clubs 4th and 5th choice options together they will leak goals…+ doesn’t help with midfielders having to cover defensive slots.

Yeah that’s fair enough

The club really let itself down in the summer imo. When many of us were calling to bolster the defence, we went and signed Daka (good player btw) when we didn’t really need another striker. And we then had to panick buy Vestergaard.

It was clear to anyone looking that we were lacking defensively. Soyuncu had been very poor at the arse end of last season and terrible in the Euro’s. Evans is an injury waiting to happen. Amartey is… well, Amartey 🤷‍♂️
This left little Wes as the only outstanding CB without a bad injury record.

His injury was shocking bad luck but we needed to bring in better quality replacements anyway. Having to rely on Evans to stay fit, Caglar to radically improve his form and Amartey to be anything more than bang average was daft. And this is why we’ve struggled. The recruitment to the club under Rodgers hasn’t been particularly good at all I don’t think 

[gerblod]

Watched it twice on MotD. Maddison was breathtaking - his drag back and then bounced timing to receive a dropping ball. Magnificent! Iheanacho was outstanding too - how cool is he under pressure. He's made the jump into now being a consistent performer. Lookman's goal was also a fine goal.

Thomas and KDH, from the little I saw were very capable. How posters on here deny LT has wing-back potential is puzzling - he made the cross for Albrighton's miss from the goal line, while being pressured. Shame he was giving away height and weight to Laporte for their fifth goal. Why wasn't Vestergaard on him?

Two penalties and a semi stop from Schmeichel, gifting Gundogan, cannot be said to be Man City tearing Leicester apart. I still can't see how Tielemans (5'9") managed to foul Laporte (6'3") so clearly that it was worth a penalty. 

Schmeichel was once again stopping goals with lightning fast reactions.

 

Until someone acts to stem the chaos that is City's defence then we'll continue to be vulnerable. But the attack has to be one of the most effective in the Prem. Vardy, Daka, Iheanacho and Maddison are currently sensational combinations. 

How things pan out over the next five months - whether a defender will be bought in or Justin and Fofana will have been successfully reintegrated - is for the soothsayers or the wiser observers (or the well-informed). By then I guess there'll be other problems to counter.

 

 

[Daggers]

Regardless of who you blame and why, we need to go large with quality defensive signings during the window.

[dynamark]

Pretty sure Dias 'headed' the ball with his upper arm onto lower arm for the 6th - not that it mattered 

[Free Falling Foxes]

1 hour ago, Frank Large's Black Book said:

 

 

Not quite everyone according the the Murky:

 

Excellent Jannik Vestergaard and Kasper Schmiechel's distribution praised by Pep Guardiola

 

 

Incoming bid from Pep?

[Beechey]

29 minutes ago, dynamark said:

Pretty sure Dias 'headed' the ball with his upper arm onto lower arm for the 6th - not that it mattered 

I thought so too. Might have been his sleeve though, which I don't think is handball anymore.

[BKLFox]

45 minutes ago, dynamark said:

Pretty sure Dias 'headed' the ball with his upper arm onto lower arm for the 6th - not that it mattered 

I thought that also 👍 

[WigstonWanderer]

Shout out to the fans at the match by the way. Singing “is this is a library“ when 4 - 0 down  Not sure how it sounded at the Etihad but came across well on the box.

[reynard]

Putting aside our injuries just for a moment. Yesterday summed up some of the issues right now and that have existed for a while.

 

1 Our defence is a mess whoever plays we can't deal with set pieces and we don't track runners. This isn't just right now.

2 We are generally to easy too play against. When we're good we press together as a team this seems to have largely gone.

3 We seem able to play well for around 15-20 minutes per game. And by well I mean very well. But we can't largely do that for say 60 minutes. I don't think this is a recent problem. We've managed to win a few close games under Rodgers this way. Unfortunately this isn't enough.

 

I know we have and have had a lot of injuries but I'm no longer certain what our style of play is. We don't seem to press as much as we did, we don't  really play on the counter attack, we don't appear to be ultra defensive nor do we get in the opponent's face and be ultra aggressive. What is out footballing identity? I think right now we simply don't have any.

[reynard]

4 hours ago, String fellow said:

After winning the Community Shield against Manchester City in Auguist, Kasper Schmeichel reckoned we'd got into the habit of lifting trophies.

Scroll forward 5 months and the only thing that KS seems to be lifting is the ball out from the back of his own net.

My view is that KS and Brendan Rodgers have a mutual appreciation society, making it awkward for the manager to even consider trying Danny Ward in the PL instead.

Ward has covid right now so currently isn't an option and I'm not sure he is any better TBH.

[BKLFox]

1 hour ago, Col city fan said:

Yeah that’s fair enough

The club really let itself down in the summer imo. When many of us were calling to bolster the defence, we went and signed Daka (good player btw) when we didn’t really need another striker. And we then had to panick buy Vestergaard.

It was clear to anyone looking that we were lacking defensively. Soyuncu had been very poor at the arse end of last season and terrible in the Euro’s. Evans is an injury waiting to happen. Amartey is… well, Amartey 🤷‍♂️
This left little Wes as the only outstanding CB without a bad injury record.

His injury was shocking bad luck but we needed to bring in better quality replacements anyway. Having to rely on Evans to stay fit, Caglar to radically improve his form and Amartey to be anything more than bang average was daft. And this is why we’ve struggled. The recruitment to the club under Rodgers hasn’t been particularly good at all I don’t think 

True but fine balance as in another twist of fate we could be sat with an abundance of starting quality CBs and thread bare forward line if injuries happened there instead.

We know Bertrand was brought in as a mentor for Thomas and JJ and the Vestergaard buy was a panic “experience” buy due to lil Wes injury BR did say he wanted and was going to buy another young CB to bring through but couldn’t now due to funds going to Vester, and who knows that potential young person could have turned out to be someone like lil Wes in adapting so quickly and we’d all be championing the recruiting.

 

My view now is we are where we are no point bringing it up every game especially against those well funded teams, reading Tuchel this morning whinging it’s not fair because he missing Werner and Havertz just makes me support BR even more as he and the players are just getting on with it 

[reynard]

6 hours ago, shailen said:

Before the Liverpool game, there is no way we'd have gone into this game relying on a back four of Albrighton, Vestergard, Amartey and Thomas. To ask them to all play together for the first time against Man City in the form they are in was never going to end well. I think the first 25 minutes showed that more then anything and a team like Man City will be ruthless. But for the rest of the game they recovered well and bar set pieces defended really well. 

 

It takes time to build a defence and usually to ask one new team mate to play is fine, but to ask three new team mates who have probably never played together with limited prep time against the best team in the world was going to be a huge task. 

Shame that they are part of the game really or we would have done well. Sorry but no side that concedes six goals can be said to have defended well in any capacity.

[st albans fox]

1 hour ago, dynamark said:

Pretty sure Dias 'headed' the ball with his upper arm onto lower arm for the 6th - not that it mattered 

It’s just incredible how inept the VAR was yesterday 

[Hoopla10]

14 minutes ago, reynard said:

2 We are generally to easy too play against. When we're good we press together as a team this seems to have largely gone.

Maybe a part of this problem is the lack of constistency (for whatever reason) in who gets into our first team. But if pressing is being drilled into them as a sqaud it shouldn't matter who is in and who is out, so I don't know. I can't remember the specific match where I noticed this most blatantly exposed. The opposition defense was running onto the ball to the left of their goal and one of our players was running to press and as he did he must have looked behind himself to make sure the rest of the team was coming about 5 times. That says to me they don't trust each other to press as a team. Which I find odd.  

[Spudulike]

3 hours ago, jmono84 said:

My take on the first peno was how the ref could watch that replay, from a terrible angle, not zoomed in and watch it twice and decided he saw a CLEAR AND OBVIOUS foul when in real time he had a much clearer view. No chance would that go the other way around against the big 6.

 

I’ve had enough of these pussy officials. Need to get guys in who can make strong common sense decisions.

 

If I was in charge I would overturn Sterling’s peno too, it’s a dive and horrible to see.

The Sterling penalty would've been scrutinised to the Nth degree had it gone the other way or against one of the dirty ESL clubs. Lots of talk about the Maddison dive against Newcastle and it was no different. Attackers look for a body part to fall over. 

[jmono84]

1 minute ago, Spudulike said:

The Sterling penalty would've been scrutinised to the Nth degree had it gone the other way or against one of the dirty ESL clubs. Lots of talk about the Maddison dive against Newcastle and it was no different. Attackers look for a body part to fall over. 

For me Maddison jumps and his legs are taken away from him after he’s played the ball. It was much less of a dive than Sterling who could have easily stayed on his feet but he knew he was about to lose possession of the ball decided to fall over. Sterling has made a career playing like this.

[Jonezy]

Only saw highlights, but actually kind of relieved we did not crumble completely. We can score goals and that will earn us points, but holy moly the defense is a mess. Hope we have some early january deals to patch up that defense.

 

Their 2 pen decisions were a joke. Apart from Maddison's disgusting dive against Newcastle, we really have had a rough season with the refs (that Brighton game still makes me angry). Laporta tumbles and VAR calls it out, yeez complete lottery, that happens every game and what about Hamza getting fouled for the last goal then. And then the refs decides to reward the Box Flopper again... Meh (Yes, I am aware thats how Vardy has got most his pens, but at least it has been a while and I am really not impressed when Vardy or Maddison fabricates contact in the box either). 

 

I am probably just taking out my frustrations on the refs because we have been playing meh for a while and are ravaged by injuries.

 

And someone at the club. Just flippin spend a fortune hiring og kidnappning some 'how to win the first header at set pieces' specialist. We are shaky enough without giving away so many set piece goals.

 

Next game is gonna be a blast as well isn't it.... 

[adam95581]

4 hours ago, Col city fan said:

This is the usual argument trotted out about Amartey. I tend to look at the bigger picture in terms of how disorganised the defence looks when he plays. Amartey and Vestie are not young kids being drafted in. They have Premiership and international experience between them, yet our fans shit themselves when they play together.

Which says it all really

Agreed, although looking at the yesterdays game, there was no recognised CDM, Albrighton was getting skinned by Sterling throughout the first half and Youri was having a shocker. Pretty hard to organise a team when you’ve got that going on. 
 

All that being said, I don’t think Amartey is an organiser. He’s a player than can fill in and do a job but he’s nothing special. The reality is you’re not going to get a player with the full package who’s willing to be 4th / 5th choice. 

[Pliskin]

There is no reason why having injuries should mean you can’t set up to be hard to beat. You simply go back to basics and ensure you’re difficult to beat and hop that you can Nick a goal. 
 

The only time I’ve seen us do this was in the first half against palace, where we just sat in and then looked to hit them on the break, and it worked. Second half we were predictably a mess and ended up losing two goals. 
 

But if you are unable to play the style you want to due to a lacking of player profiles available, you go back to the basics and go from there. 
 

We haven’t been doing that, it appears to me that Brendan is failing to adapt his tactics and is trying to persist with a failing set up, that just isn’t working. He needs to abandon his philosophy and work on making us tough to beat, keep games tight and look to pinch goals here or there, until either confidence grows enough to be more expansive, or key player profiles return. 
 

If he has shown no signs of doing this so far this season, then I doubt he will at all. 

[Claudio Fannieri]

56 minutes ago, Pliskin said:

There is no reason why having injuries should mean you can’t set up to be hard to beat. You simply go back to basics and ensure you’re difficult to beat and hop that you can Nick a goal. 
 

The only time I’ve seen us do this was in the first half against palace, where we just sat in and then looked to hit them on the break, and it worked. Second half we were predictably a mess and ended up losing two goals. 
 

But if you are unable to play the style you want to due to a lacking of player profiles available, you go back to the basics and go from there. 
 

We haven’t been doing that, it appears to me that Brendan is failing to adapt his tactics and is trying to persist with a failing set up, that just isn’t working. He needs to abandon his philosophy and work on making us tough to beat, keep games tight and look to pinch goals here or there, until either confidence grows enough to be more expansive, or key player profiles return. 
 

If he has shown no signs of doing this so far this season, then I doubt he will at all. 

Great post