City thrown away a 3-0 lead… we need to go at them hard from the off. If this was a Klopp team we’d be storming them from the off and potentially going into 2 goal lead inside first 10 mins. Slots teams not quite as gung ho which may give city time to get into the game. But defensively they are there to get st
No I think Slot's style fits well to pick them off on the counter - and tbf we've done similar under Klopp in certain wins against then.
Ref, 4th official, and VAR for game against City are Chris Kavanagh (Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester) Anthony Taylor (Wythenshawe, Manchester) Paul Tierney (Wigan, Greater Manchester)
As funny as it is watching the media sensationalise City's predicament, they're basically in a situation where circumstances have disrupted the balance of their team. I remember two very specific instances where this happened to us - the defence crisis of 2020/21 and the midfield crisis of 2022/23 where eventually Klopp changed our set up to get us back on a winning run. I expect Pep to do something similar - he'll probably try it this weekend. Hopefully it won't work though.
Two scenarios when Klopp eventually overcame a crisis twice that was really caused by FSG's stingyness. But be fair, in the first instance he didn't help by sticking rigidly to his favourite formation and dragging back our then best midfielder into CB when, as eventually panned out, he was better using the 2 slower CB's he had in the squad and changing formation and tactics to shield those 2 cb's better with what was still the best DM in the game. The next incident was not his fault though - the club responded to a knockback by Tchumaeni by just sticking their hands back in their pockets when the whole world and his wife knew the previous season's exertions had shot the legs from under Fab, Hando, and Milner.
That is absolutely sensible by city to make these arrangements as there's no way they win by playing fair.
Look as i said there's players we simply cannot replace in our tram and city hadlve also got this. A half fit kdb who is on his way downhill, still fired them on last season. Rodri and then dias, then haaland and finally ederson. Basically city are seeing no dias, no rodri and little from kdb. It's put a massive hole in their team and they also have lots of smaller knocks and losses of form as well. If we lose salah, gravenberch amd vvd we are a shadow too. City have made decisions thst have exposed themselves to these issues. 1. Phillips. Why buy them, why not pay him 2. Kovacic as Phillips replacement. Not a 6. 3. Never replaced fernandinho really. Maybe rodri was his replacement in peps mind. Maybe Phillips was. 4. Buying doku and this new young lad, not a patch on David silva or mahrez. 5. Buying grealish. As above. 6. Loss of foden form. 7. Selling palmer. Why strengthen a rival to look good financially. 8. Selling alvarez and not replacing. Not their next player but a contributor and if haaland is injured they've no replacement at all. 9. Selling off all full backs and playing cbs. That's the decisions then cb moving to cm to cover as well. They look all wrong imo. I'm sure there are other thing that people think is wrong but their squad always looked small enough bit lots of rotating in front of rodri and around dias worked.
My city team Ederson Walker dias ake Akanji gvardiol Foden kdb silva grealish Haaland. Move a cb to play in rodri position. Put the 3 at the back together again. One of the two cbs I am putting at cm drops to cb in the 4 when defending. Make kdb and silva drop into a 433 then. City shouldn't be conceding 2 per game. Something else is badly wrong when thst is happening. Their fans are desperate to make out they can't win this weekend. I think they can do 100% and we have our work cut out to improve from where we are now.
It's a bit ridiculous to suggest all the officials for the game are City fans. City doesn't have enough fans to fill the VAR bench.
