Probably getting them ready for next season's glorious assault on Europa League 2...if we scrape qualification.
Jose watch
- Thread starter The RDBD
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Probably getting them ready for next season's glorious assault on Europa League 2...if we scrape qualification.
I'd really rather not...unless it wins us a place in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Be nice for them to visit Budapest too, as we'll probably end up playing someone from there.
Maybe Ferencvaros, who are managed by Sergei Rebrov at the moment? They're absolutely pissing the league.
A win against a team in 8th would be nice...
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Southampton had played one game. They won five of the next six and drew the other.
Man Utd had played one game less than everyone else, bar City. They've lost twice since then, winning 12 and moving up to 2nd.
Burnley, Brighton and West Brom were crap and still are.
City had played a game less than everyone else, barring Utd. They're unbeaten since and have won virtually every game, except for three draws in all competitions.
Arsenal and Leeds are erratic and they were then, too.
Trying to write off wins against two sides that have barely lost a game all season is silly, especially when omitting key information.
City have played 37 games this season, winning 29 of them, drawing 6 and losing only 2.
On the other hand, have you looked at the form of the teams who are good now when we played them
Southampton: L1
Penchester: W1 L1
The Sheikh Mansour Team: W3 D3 L1
Woolwich: W4 D1 L5
We played all of those teams when their form was spotty and took advantage of it - but the problem is that not only are we found wanting when we come up against teams whose form is consistent (or better), we're also going into games against teams in poor form and coming away with nothing, for example not only had Brighton not won a home game all season when we showed up they had only won three games all season at that point, and similarly Saltypool hadn't won a game in five but we decided to help them out of that slump while also deciding that if scheduled boxing matches weren't happening at the stadium we may as well stage one of our own in the dressing room at half time - and it's this part that's concerning, because for years we've known that the ubermensch's success is based on taking advantage of other team's mistakes, and yet now it's the polar opposite and a team needs to be out of form or simply hopeless to not get some joy against us
How are you going to talk about form when referring to teams who had only played one or two games? It's meaningless.
City weren't **** when we beat them and suddenly amazing since, to the point that nobody's beat them in months.
Utd have also been in very good form in that period and we absolutely battered them.
There's plenty to criticise Mourinho for without having to try and pick silly holes like this one, in my opinion.
He did some things well early on in the season and at the end of the last one. He's not doing them now.
I'd definitely be up for that. Budapest is great. I've been a number of times and highly recommend it.
In many different ways, thanks for asking
The Sheikh Mansour Team played seven games before we played them and were in spotty form, which is hardly "one or two games"
Penchester's form for their first six games: W2 D1 L3, so saying they were in good form is a straight up lie
Southampton played a single pre season game so were lacking in fitness even by early season standards
And it's the last point which leads to something interesting, namely how many pre-season games we and our opponents from the first ten games played
Spurs: 4
Newcastle: 4
West Scam: 4
Burnley: 3
Everton: 2
Brighton: 2
Southampton: 1
Penchester: 1
West Brom: 1
Chelsea: 1
The Sheikh Mansour Team: 0
And the thing is that actually matches up with some of our results, for example Newcastle and West Scam were able to play for 90 minutes and in both games we conceded equalisers in stoppage time, and against West Scam that came after giving them the ball and conceding 2/3 of the pitch for 65 minutes which means I just found another reason for the tactics in that game being abysmal, just as Burnley were able to stubbornly keep us out for 76 minutes - while on the other hand Southampton faded in the second half, Penchester were dead on their feet for at least the last 30 minutes (and probably more, what with them having Martial sent off in the first half) and The Sheikh Mansour Team were knackered in the last 10-15 minutes so spent most of that period kicking anyone who came near them
But once teams are on a more level footing fitness wise, what starts happening? Man Utd fans tweeting "HAHAHAHA" in response to most of our matchday tweets is what happens, even when we're playing teams who until that point had been out of form because any fitness advantage has been eroded by a combination of opponents having time to catch up coupled with us overplaying certain players so they're knackered compared to the early season, with Hojbjerg and Son being the most obvious examples
Good job I didn't say that then, isn't it?
Post-Spam, I'm happy to criticise Mourinho for being overly negative, but I see it as largely being a response to that collapse.
It wasn't evident against Newcastle and they didn't threaten all game. The penalty was their first and only shot on target.
We should've buried both matches, but poor finishing and even worse officials cost us points.
The two most consistent themes of this campaign have been overly negative tactics and **** refereeing to the point of rule changes.
Mourinho can be held responsible for one of those things, but the other seems to maintain regardless of who's in the dugout.
Southampton didn't suddenly gain full match fitness after we played them. The won five and drew one after that.
Why have they suddenly gone to **** now, when they should be hitting their stride? They play a high press and we're having a lot of games.
Utd weren't burned out for the last half hour, either. We eased up, as we were 5-1 up against 10 men. They sat back and we let them.
City weren't knackered, either. They ran out of ideas. Guardiola only used two subs and that was with 18 minutes to go.
He had Aguero and Gundogan on the bench.
So why did you say "Utd have also been in very good form in that period and we absolutely battered them." then?
The thing with the Newcastle match is it's not like they were sucking air by the 80th minute in a way that Southampton and Penchester were when we played them, or a few of our players have been since late December, and that was just enough to get them into a position to win the 4th most farcical penalty we've had awarded against us this season. If they were knackered in the last ten minutes, or to be more accurate enough players were knackered in the last ten minutes, the entire scenario wouldn't have happened
It has to be said that straight up wrong tactics are also an issue
Case in point, the West Scam game is the exact sort of match where having Lamela in the squad is ideal as he'd wind up their players and take their eye off the ball and also offer some protection on our right flank - and yet Lamela wasn't even in the squad for that game, which I'm reasonably certain I said was odd before the match kicked off and certainly because an obvious issue when our right flank was overrun for the entire second half as we didn't have anyone to offer protection
More recently, there's been a glut of games where we've set up to soak up pressure and hit teams on the break (most notably the Saltypool game) where the logical choice would be for Toby to be in the team as he can chip a pass out from the back to the feet of someone in the opposition half - and yet he isn't starting, which means our defenders aimlessly hoof the ball 30-40 yards to the opponents every single time, which means the pressure isn't relieved and just comes back on us in another wave
There's a simple reason why Southampton hit form after playing us: their next five games were Burnley, West Brom, Chelsea, Everton and Villa, or to put it another way two teams who are crap, one team whose form was a little shaky, and two teams whose form has been sporadic all season - and that's literally the order the games fell in
As for their current form, injuries have a hell of a lot to do with that, because here's how they stack up since mid-December
Romeu missed the Liverpool, Leicester and Arsenal games with a calf injury, came back against Villa, missed the 9-0 tonking due to reaggravating it, but played their last two matches
Vestergaard missed the Fulham, West Scam, Saltypool, Leicester, Arsenal, Villa and Penchester matches with a knee injury, but has played their last two
KWP missed the Arsenal, Villa, Penchester and Newcastle matches with a thigh strain, but played their last game
Walcott missed the Man Utd, Newcastle and Wolves matches with a hamstring injury, and remains out
Ings missed the Leicester match with a knock, and was unable to play 90 minutes against Arsenal or Penchester
Redmond missed the Fulham, West Scam, Saltypool and Leicester games with a knock, and has been a sicknote all season
Djenpo missed the Leicester and Arsenal games with a thigh strain, and has been a sicknote all season
Salisu played 18 minutes against Wolves, having been unavailable until December due to injury - then missed January due to another injury
Long story short, when they're missing 3-4 players for some matches during this slump and are drafting in some youth players just so they can actually field a starting xi, it's little wonder their form went off a cliff (although loaning out Yan Valery in January hasn't helped)
You've removed the context of the previous sentence.
Newcastle were crap the whole match and Bruce did what he always does.
He set them up to stay in the game, we didn't kill them off and he sent on Carroll late, so they could go direct.
They dived for a free-kick that the ref gave without looking at the "foul", then won a wrongly awarded penalty.
It was a robbery, but we put ourselves in that position by not getting another goal.
I think he had a knock, but Bale may have been preferred to him.
Chelsea, Everton and Villa are not easy games. Come on.
The context of the patchy form they had at that point?
This is the thing about calling it a robbery: if they were knackered for the last ten minutes it wouldn't have happened
Bruce's tactics are broadly along the same lines as Allardyce or Pulis, which requires players to be fit not only to be bloody irritating to play against for 90 minutes as they always seem to have a bank of four around every player of the opposing team, but also for a late smash and grab raid from a set piece - and that's exactly what they got. The fact they were able to get the free kick that led to the patently wrong handball call wouldn't have happened if their players were more likely to blow chunks than jog for ten yards
He certainly didn't have a knock, as he came off the bench against Stoke a few games later
Also, you reminded me of another baffling thing about our squad for that game: we had two RWs on the bench in Bale and Lucas, but nobody who could play as an AM, meaning that when we subbed off Ndombele for Winks that meant we would either have to chance our shape or play one of Winks, Sissoko, Hojbjerg or the previously subbed on Bale out of position to maintain our shape. Also, Davies was the closest we had to a CB on the bench, and Vini wasn't on the bench...although that's less of a surprise, let's be honest
Chelsea's first six games: W2 D3 L1, with 3-3 draws against both West Brom and Southampton due to a leaky defence, while their form through December/January was W4 D2 L5, so they've had two poor patches already this season and they might still have a third looking at their last handful of fixtures
Everton have had a couple of sticky patches already this season, for example getting seven points of a possible 21 during October-November and eight out of a possible 24 since the start of the year, and in those periods they've lost to the likes of Fulham, Leeds, and twice to Newcastle
Villa have also been patchy as hell, getting 6 points out of 21 in October-November (when they lost to Leeds, Southampton and Brighton) and since the turn of the year picked up 9 out of a potential 24 points with a loss to Burnley and draw to Brighton in that period, plus two postponements which could skew the results either in their favour, Everton's, or ours
Southampton gained some form due to playing a few teams who were out of form at the time, simple as that - and then it went off a cliff when their players started dropping like flies
This was the precise reason Lampard got the sack - they couldn't lay a glove on top-half teams.