I think we gave a good account of ourselves, cannot fault the commitment from team and manager, it was a big ask today with Company back in the side organising their defence, we may have lost, but our form is good going into the next game, great performance from our lads!......................
Thought we gave a good account of ourselves against a powerful Man City side. Shame Carroll gave it away for their second goal, but at least we didn't go down with a whimper. Onwards and upwards. Newcastle in 4th spot now
one criticism I will make is that I lost count of the times a ball was passed to a Swans player with a City player a foot away from him and 50% of the time the ball was lost. The marking down the left when City had the ball on their left was abysmal, quick switch and the City player on their right was unmarked, happened a few times
Well, that was gutting in the end, but really proud of the boys. City were the better team, that was pretty clear for most of the match. But, we showed an ability to open them up numerous times which was great from our perspective. If you can open up the champions, then you can certainly open up the other teams in the league. My main observations today: 1. Gomis should have scored his chance - probably should have lobbed Hart for a cute finish. 2. Shelvey's free kick - oh my god... so damn close! However, Shelvey was sloppy in possession during his time on the pitch, although I'm sure he was brought on to force the issue, so maybe fair enough. 3. Barrow has to start the next match. He does what Dyer did 5 years ago - beats the man in front of him! While Dyer played a nice pass for the goal, he's not beating his man like a winger should. With Barrow causing havoc down the right, it will take pressure off Montero on the left. We'll have real pace and trickery on both sides with Routledge and Dyer ready to come off the bench. 4. Great to see Gomis starting to really show his strength, some of his hold up play during his cameo was great! 5. Taylor at fault for the first goal, but didn't do much else wrong to be fair. For the goal, he has to stop the cross first and foremost and, in the process, show Navas onto his weaker left foot into our midfield. He let the ball in, but Bartley could have tracked Jovetic better too. 6. Tom Carroll had to play a better pass to Montero in the build up to Yaya's goal... We should have had Montero 1v1 against Zabaleta but instead conceded a goal. Tom played well on the whole, but it's the small things that lose you matches. Happy and proud of the performance, but a couple of "what could have been"s in there this afternoon!
yep class showed in the end just as i said and i cant fault the guys for a brilliant effort. to lose 2-1 against the premiership champions on their own pitch is no mean feat especially taking the lead. The lads can walk away from that with their heads held high...
Agree with all of this except the dump on Carroll (a little here), but a lot by others. Yes, Carroll gave possession away with a bad pass .... but 45 yards from goal and then City had to create a move, slip through a pass, and Toure had to go past three Swans players to score ... any one of whom could have nicked ball and taken Toure's opportunity away. Carroll's one bad pass with consequences resulting from the failure of others, is nothing compared to the number of bad passes and possession given away by Shelvey in his brief appearance, many closer to our goal than the one by Carroll, in which no City player was able to capitalize. I guess Toure can't be everywhere.
As a follow-on - Carroll starts for me against Palace. He is busy, effective, precise and always involved. He fits our game and fits with those around him especially Ki. In comparison, for somebody only 22 years of age, Shelvey is sluggish. I was going to say slow, but he's not slow, he can move when he wants, he is just way too often sluggish. This was even more noticeable in the 15 minutes or so he was on the field. A player his age should not play or look sluggish when playing just 15 minutes against players that have already been busting a gut for 75 or more. At his age it can't be in his body, it must be in his head, but he'd rather bang a ball 50 yards to nobody then jog than pass and move, receive then pass and move again.
Barrow v Dyer. I think BigK makes a good point. Dyer just didn't seem in the mood to take on Clichy today and was dragging by the middle of the second half. Barrow is raw and he is going to make mistakes - for sure - but he's got a blinding burst of speed, the confidence to go for it ... and he's got some skill ... the cross he laid into Gomis that Gomis just didn't move for was a peach. More please!
BBC Cardiff: "Manchester City have won five and lost just one of the six Premier League meetings with Swansea City" ****ing hell, dumb ****s are either ignorant of our club or hate to admit we are better than they like to say we are. There has been SEVEN matches, and we have gotten a win and TWO draws within them.
It was one mistake from Carroll, but in a costly area and moment. My main problem with him giving the ball away is that it was a simple pass to Montero and it would have set us on an attack. What followed was Man City taking advantage of the gap that opened up from Carroll losing the ball. The defence pull wide and the midfield start moving out when we have the ball, Carroll loses it and then there's a big gaping hole for City to attack. A nice pass into Fernando(inho?) and a nice backheel capitalised on that gap. Our defence and midfield are caught cold because one second we should be counter attacking, the next second we're at panic stations trying to get back into our defensive shape. Bartley and Taylor did well to almost get back, Taylor could have given a penalty away if Toure had decided to go down. Carroll will have apologised in the changing room afterwards, he'll know he put his teammates under pressure that they shouldn't have been in. However, I have no gripe with Carroll's overall performance today, he played well! But, in my view, he just misplaced a simple pass that he should have made. It put the whole team under pressure, and unfortunately Man City had the tools to make the most of it.
Eventually saw the match on TV. Very harsh criticism of Carroll (similar to the criticism of Bony for Arsenal's goal) losing the ball that close to the half way line with a whole defensive group be hid him isn't 'being at fault' for the goal. Taylor stands next to Ash and leaves the left hand side of the field undefended. Is it him or coach? Whatever, it leaves attackers with so much time on the left it's no wonder he can get to close down the danger. Jonjo came on and did what Jonjo does - give the ball away cheaply. Their first goal was a cheap give away with Ash, Bartley and Taylor all in the frame for a finger pointing. Heard Jason Mohamed say Man City were convincing winners! No rose coloured glasses here but a share of the points looked on until the final whittle. That said, without Fabianski we could have been a couple down by half time. Questions - Should we buy a replacement for Bony when he's at the ACN? Has Carrol got the physical strength to play a defensive game away from home? Can Jonjo be trusted to play from the start? Can we afford to keep Taylor as first choice left back? Does Nathan get a couple or so games following injury to prove himself back on form -statistically he's doing very very well and always supports Rangle.
We played great but were eventually beaten by a team so far ahead of us in class but we never gave up and this shows we are a premiership team that are worthy of their status...
Just think, we've played Man City, Everton and Arsenal and come away with 4 points, nearly 5 today. If somebody told us 4-5 years ago we would be doing this we'd have laughed at them. These 4 points for me are seen as bonus points. The next couple of games we should be targeting maximum points. But, we are fast becoming a squad that can beat anybody in this league if we play to our best.
Very, very different situations. Bony was in the opposition half, gave the ball away with a backwards pass, Carroll makes a good challenge, then Arsenal launch an attack. We had our chances to stop that goal before Arsenal scored it, namely bringing down Ox. Today, we lost the ball and were punished immediately (in under 10 seconds). Carroll picked the ball up and was meant to be the reliever of pressure in that situation. He didn't and put his teammates under pressure instead. Our team was badly out of shape when he gave it away and it's not surprising that a hole opened up in our defence when we were on red alert after an unexpected mis-hit pass. What I'm about to do is not attack Carroll, I've stated many times he had a good game, but I'm going to break down the build up to City's second goal. I've broken it down into 4 pictures: 1. View attachment 34230 First up, Tom Carroll's mis-hit pass. Should have played a firm through ball to give Montero a one on one with Zabaleta. Played behind Montero and underhit badly. 2. View attachment 34231 Second, you can see how badly out of shape we were from the previous Man City attack. Giving the ball away cheaply when your team is this badly out of shape is asking for trouble, Carroll should have been aware of what was behind him. 3. View attachment 34232 In fairness, Carroll gets back and faces up his man. Siggy has run from the other side of the pitch to try to get anywhere near Yaya. Taylor has also done well to get from the other side of the pitch over to Navas. Ash, Ki and Bartley are stood on a sixpence. Ash has not drifted left with Taylor and now a gap between Ash and Taylor has opened up with Fernandinho hovering completely unmarked. 4. View attachment 34233 Ash finally spots unmarked Fernandinho, but it's too late as he has time to control and pick a pass. Taylor spins to try and close the gap as he realises that Navas will be unused in this play. Siggy has tried valiantly to get to Yaya, but it's too late as he's already bursting through the gap. Nice backheel from Fernandinho means this was now either going to be a penalty, goal or great save. Quite simply, this is not like the Bony/Taylor/Carroll blame game from two weeks ago. This was an inexperienced lad hitting one of his only poor passes of the game. It put us under massive pressure to drift left, and unfortunately, inevitably, a hole opened up in the defence. We got overloaded on the left side with Yaya as the spare man (Gylfi was never able to get close enough), when in reality, we should have been on the counter attack. Gylfi's reaction says a lot as you can see he knows that it didn't need to happen, it was so sloppy from Carroll. As I said, he'll know that he made a boo-boo, he'll have apologised and we'll all move on. He certainly played well enough throughout the course of the game, in my view.
Have watched the goals several times now and once again the first Man City goal came from a cross on our left when the winger was given too much room. When is this going to be sorted out? Alright Carroll made a poor pass at the start of the 2nd goal but Taylor should have made a better attempt at tackling Toure. Along with other people I still think that left back is a problem position.
