On another point it was noticeable that the City players had been told to lift the ball when shooting as they had spotted that Allisson crouches really low in readiness for a shot . I'm not even sure that for the 3rd goal the "pass" to Sterling was actually an attempt to lift it over him . He might need to consider trying to make a slight adjustment so he doesn't go so low .
I think we need to understand what we have seen here as its a complete and utter breakdown of the system. You've cms trying to play CB and getting out of position. Look at henderson for third goal. hes so far beyond where any cb should be its hilarious. You've wingers (milner and shaqiri) playing cm and wandering out of position or wanting to just go forward. you've wijnaludm who's not really committed as people have said. We need to get back to the basics really. We know what to do but seeing it and fixing it when under pressure is tough. IMO still getting players in their best position and accepting new CBs/ phillips are not as good as vvd etc is vital. I want to see options when getting pressed and if alisson had pumped it long after the first option was gone rather than dicking with it until full closed down we might have got a draw. We deserved to lose that game overall but the manner of defeat was down to rank errors.
Just make a point about Hendo that the boss of Flamengo, with a bemused and slightly confused face said about a year ago in reply to a question asked by an interviewer -'Of course he is one of the best midfielders in the world: why would anyone say otherwise?'. Why indeed. No, he's not KDB, but he's no ****ing carthorse either. But he's not a centre back just because he can play there: it's like using a Jaguar to pull a caravan - it can be done, but shouldn't be a regular thing. And the same goes for Fab.
didn't top gear tow with a jaguar. please log in to view this image also this seems to be an actual "thing" out there thats reviewed even!!!!! https://www.practicalcaravan.com/reviews/jaguar-xf please log in to view this image
Absolutely not! My dream is still Fabinho, Keita and Thiago. With that said, Hendo had drastically improved over 2020 - takes far more risks now.
City are on great form, we are not, and it took big Al's disaster for City to win it. The only reason I wasn't all doom and gloom over it, we were in that game. It wasn't even a huge leap to say we could have pinched a winner. 'foul' on Salah for the peno tho
errrrrrrr we were in it like west brom were in it against us mate. We took a no risk policy and we did well first half as city failed to really figure out what we were at. Second half city killed us with thier changes. We worked hard and stayed in it but the goal came form nohting as a pen and honestly we were mostly hanging on there. Winner imo is like brighton or west brom catching us on the hop. We would have been incredibly lucky to win that game with that performance.
After we scored the pen, things were better. They certainly caused us more problems tho it was still 1 1. two gift goals made it 3 1. I was saying as lackluster as we are, we still may well have grabbed a point or less probable 3 City created how many clear cut chances? The 4th was a goal from a game already over, I ignore that one, blinder as it was. The point, we weren't great at all and it still took two complete ****ups by big Al to give them the win Our probs are not defensive, we just cant score many goals of late.
Imo we were playing safe. We didn't look like scoring and then the pen was a gift from God. Imo we made subs and the midfield fell apart and I showed on the goals why it was a collective **** up. Once their second went in imo it was game over I'd say they got the lead from an awful taa mistake but press up much better and really looked set to win 1-0. They were in fairness pressing up well to force those calamity from us but yeah it could have been a 1-1 draw if we had not lost all shape from subs. Really it should have been. 4-1 just shows the scope of the issue imo.
When you have a run of games where you cant buy a goal bar two games, and have two midfielders in defence, you tend to play it safe, more so when it's City on top form. I'd have been OK with a point. and if big Al hadn;t had a mare, it's quite possible, neigh probable, we'd not even be discussing a 1 4 trashing
