I know we're not supposed to criticise the bald frau... er, I mean football genius, but I'm going to. What's Guardiola doing? Weird lineup, odd subs and bizarre excuses afterwards. I'm sure Rico Lewis is a fantastic prospect, but I couldn't even work out where he was playing. Why sandwich him into the side at the expense of Cancelo, who's now ****ed off? Why sign a proper left-back in Sergio Gomez, then basically never play him or bring him on? Why only make two subs when you've got a ridiculously talented bench? It's far from a one-off this season, but I think Guardiola's been far from his best so far. He needs to sort his **** out soon or City aren't going to overhaul the filth. They might even have to rely on Utd to do it...
Happens every week as far as I can see, not just against us, so I'm calling it as corruption. The officials already know all about it.
The main reasons I dislike him are because of his lack of class. He spits (a disgraceful habit). He is a bad loser. He has a sneering condescending attitude in both pre and post match interviews. Awful man.
Very interesting debate. I haven't watched much of City this season save their games against us and in both of them, Haaland was extremely quiet. KDB looks like the only player in that City side who can get the most out of him. Ironically, and I obviously say this tongue in cheek, I think Haaland fits our system far better than he does City's.
Kane 1 Haaland 0 sent to City supporting brother at full time still awaiting response please log in to view this image
After Haarlands piss poor imitation of a footballer today is it too early to call him Scandi Carrol...?
My wife came to the match yesterday....she is not really a football fan, only her 4th match ever but her comments were interesting. She said City were much too cautious and very boring to watch. But very controlled and calm in possession. But we took a lot more risk when we had the ball and while this meant we lost it more, it was exciting to watch. She thought we panicked a bit when near goal which is why we didn't score more. The positioning of our players when City had the ball was excellent in denying them space. She also thought Lloris looked more confident passing the ball than Ederson. She was surprised when I told her that City had scored more goals than anyone else for five seasons running.
Them and Chelsea should have been expelled from the league years ago. Might as well throw Newcastle out too while we're at it.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind. Incidentally wasn't their brilliant defence in the "Court of Arbitration for Sport and Not Punishing Drug Taking" not that they didn't breach FFP, but that the timescale was wrong. So they got off on a technicality. So let's see what the best lawyers money can buy come up with this time.
They’ll get a fine of probably high thousands or low millions, possibly a transfer ban for a window or two and maybe worst case deducted something like 5 points for next season and that’ll be about it - assuming their inevitable appeal is unsuccessful of course. Worth it for 9 years of incredible (bent) success.
If the above is the new Shia/Sunni schism, neutrals may wish to stay well clear of Spurlock lest the "response" comes ...
Grown up time ( ) ... This fixture has "previous" for Pep. He has lost every time, and not scored one goal. Every Spurs manager, irrespective of squad, seems to know how to turn his team over, So a manager with nous, for this one game out of 38 per season, should surely try something different. Perhaps Vardy-ball. Perhaps something else. But anything other than the proverbial definition of insanity (doing the same thing to the letter repeatedly, and expecting different results) .
As has been pointed out, if they have their trophies removed that means Ryan Mason will have won a trophy in his managerial debut...
Passmap time ...sort of, as the link is uncopyable, but it's at the foot of the article However, going through the article, one thing does stick out and that's Emerson seems to being used as a RCB Allow me to try and explain how this works. First, here's a snapshot of one of the Mansourites' attacks early in the first half, and you can see that we're reacting to Silva looking to break forward while Rodri has the ball by shifting into a back five please log in to view this image What you'll also notice is the positioning of the WBs: Emerson is playing close to Romero, while Perisic is leaving a gap between him and Davies - which looks a lot like the setup was for Cuti and Emerson to double up on Haaland, while Perisic's position appears to be cutting off the wide ball to Mahrez, leaving Dier and Davies to deal with Alvarez With me so far? Okay, now here's the interesting part: the next screenshot is from midway through the second half while we're beginning a counterattack, and something does stick out there please log in to view this image Here we see Cuti has the ball and is bringing it out of the back with Son as the open passing option as Bentancur is blocking off Rodri. But look behind Cuti and that's where you see the interesting part, because you can see Emerson occupying the space that Cuti usually does in our back three which means that while Cuti is moving forward we still have 3ATB so that Haaland and Grealish don't have free space to exploit It's also worth pointing out that the passmap shows up something else interesting: Perisic wasn't hugging the touchline and getting in Son's way as he often has this season, instead he was playing more like we expected Matt Doherty to play as he was coming inside to receive the ball while Emerson was the flank-hugging WB, and you can sort of see that from the second snapshot as he's also in acres of space the moment Cuti is moving the ball forwards which gives Son an option to pass to as Deki and H pull to the right - which was surely by design considering a trademark of Conte's system when he was at Chelsea was Diego Costa and Willian drifting to the right to create a few yards of space for Hazard to exploit
Everyone knows city would have won the league despite a points deduction. Gotta feel sorry for Arsenal having a “*” next to their title, if they do win it.
