You sometimes wonder - are City a team? Is there any sense of collective purpose? Or is it just a gathering of huge egos all playing for their own self promotion - not to mention an obscene amount of money, of course!
City are a good team but they need Aguero, every great team needs that one player that sums up what they are about and others may think its Toure or Silva but for me its Aguero, as he reminds me of Tevez, works hard, runs and runs but is capable of delivering when it matters, scoring great goals and without him they lack something.
Should add I mean fully fit as he hasn't been the same recently and as soon as he gets a few games he was injured again last night as he played twice in their last 10 league games and they need him to be match fit for the run in.
With all the talent in that squad, Aguero should not be the reason Spurs have been within 10 pts of them in the PL this season. It does seem like unless everything is fair weather (like in 2011-12) , they have not had the managers with the necessary steel to forge them into title winners by the force of will.
Interesting views on City. If you took away that lucky last minute recovery v QPR as well and you'd be looking at a side that has spent hundreds of millions to win just 1 f/a cup (as have Wigan and Portsmouth in recent years). No shame losing to Barca but that's 3 years in the C.L, out of the group stage twice and out at the last 16 this year. Compare that to us for example and we made 3 semi finals in 4 years post Roman. Something isn't quite right there.
You was lucky to have found Mourinho, you couldn't have asked for a better manager to come in. Pellergini has made the job harder because he wants to play an open attacking game so he doesn't have the tactics of Mourinho to fall back on. Thats why he needs all their best attacking players on tune and the Aguero/Negredo partnership. Mourinho doesn't need strikers! Hes a great manager and it was an insult that AVB was called "mini mourinho"
"No shame losing to Barca but that's 3 years in the C.L, out of the group stage twice and out at the last 16 this year. Compare that to us for example" Compare that to the Goons and you have parity.
Mourinho is a great manager and in many ways, I wish he'd been offered and taken the Utd job. But I don't think the club were comfortable with a manager who is happy to get 2-0 in front and then defend, which is Mourinho's staple tactic. Chelsea are consistently getting results and so there is no reason for complaint, but there is lack of style, even with stylish players in the team.
"Not really. We always make out of the group stages, without fail." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998–99_UEFA_Champions_League#Group_stage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999–2000_UEFA_Champions_League#First_group_stage Fail. I think you must have meant Spurs.
Nice, you had to back 14 years to see the last time we failed to get of the group stages. Also in those days, we could not even play our 'home' games at home, FFS. City have no such excuses. Anyone can see that there is zero 'parity' between us and City in the CL, in terms of progression. City failed to win a single game in last season's CL for example. They have been far the worst English team in the CL over the last few years. They got a few tough groups, but we also got a tough group this season.
To be fair to City, they've had some tough groups. But hey've been poor away to rivals - wrong tactics by Mancini mainly in that you need to contain and play for a draw sometimes and he didn't. They played as if every game was a knockout cup tie and were exposed defensively. 1-2 v Napoli, 2-3 v Real Madrid, 1-3 v Ajax, 0-1 v Dortmund. 1-3 v Bayern Munich this season at home, but they had a much easier group this time.
"Nice, you had to back 14 years to see the last time we failed to get of the group stages." Fact is that I compared LIKE WITH LIKE. FIRST 3 SEASONS in the CL for Citeh vs those of the Goons. And Citeh can have no excuses, but the Goons can have some ??
"To be fair to City, they've had some tough groups." They have indeed. No way Spurs adventure in 2010-11 would have happened with those opponents. And also note that the CL standard has risen drastically. Spurs qualified as CL "pot 2" with a mere 58 UEFA ranking pts in 2010. Citeh missed out on pot 2 this summer by less than 1 pt, even though their ranking total was 70+ .
There is the tiny excuse of us not having our homes game, at HOME. As excuses go, that's a pretty good one. Also, let's not even compare City's spending to our's at the time. Even if you account for inflation, the difference is vast.
Lots of excuses there. Of course I don't mind the spending one, because tis implicit confirmation of just how epic Spurs foray into the CL truly was.
So did we when we started out in the C.L and weren't seeded. I think we had the current champions at least 3 times in our group.
When has Moyes ever been known for style? Fine if you don't want a Jose at the expense of a Pep or Klopp but Moyes' teams have never been known as particularly attractive and Moyes also loves to sit on a lead.
I've said it before - but it is worth repeating - that a CL place is wasted on Arsenal. £ity have the excuse of being new to the competition, and they are still are relative new-comer to the top table, and Chavs and United have won the competition in recent years, albeit that Chavs win involved some of the most dull and negative football I have ever had the misfortune to witness. But what has Arsenal ever done in that competition? I'll give you a clue: it's a 7-letter word, beginning with "n" and ending with a "g."
