01 Nov 2016 21:38:46
Just saw City show up for a change against a top team in a very good second half performance. But what it did show is how important it is for Utd to play with real intensity from the start in every match.

1.) 01 Nov 2016
01 Nov 2016 22:00:50
City won because they have a manager who's brave and believes in attacking football . No matter who he's up against he's never going to send out a team to park the bus .

2.) 01 Nov 2016
01 Nov 2016 22:45:30
It's a great point. We all talk about confidence a lot, maybe our players would exude more confidence on the pitch if the managers we have showed confidence in them.

It must be disheartening for any player to be told by their manager "we need to stop this team from playing, so we can hopefully win". I mean what does that say about how good the manager thinks his team/ players are?

I wouldn't last 2 minutes under LVG or Mourinho as I would say. "Gaffer, let's have their manager telling my opponent to worry about ME and US, not us getting scared and cautious about them".

I remember as a kid playing against a top team, all season we had battered teams but this game was an National cup and the manager told me and a few others to focus on how to defend (as midfielders), we spent all game worrying about what their supposed superstars would do that we ended up losing and offering nothing going forward. Since that time I ignored my manager if ever they asked me to change my way of playing to combat inferior/ similar opposition (didn't matter as it wasn't at this level of course) .

Maybe that's why we play in such a stuttered way now, and why so many players seem to be phased out over the past few years for bizarre reasons! Maybe Miki said, "I think these players should worry about what I will do to them Jose, stop being such a wimp", who knows.

Telling a team of attacking talent to think defensive leads to the problems we see almost every time we play a half decent team. Confidence is massive at this level and it starts with the manager believing in his players.

3.) 01 Nov 2016
01 Nov 2016 23:09:38
Nothing to do with intensity mate.

Quite simply, City won because they have a better Facebook page than Barcelona :)

4.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 00:22:16
Barca were missing 3 of their key defensive players before anyone gets too excited about that City scoreline .

5.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 06:35:34
Instead of sitting back and play negative football to snatch a massive point at home. Pep decided to go out and attack and it did the damage. They were pretty good at camp nou a week ago as well. Credit it where it's due. Made look that Barcelona team worse than Sunday league.

6.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 06:55:30
pep is maybe a decent manager after all.

7.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 07:08:23
City are a good team and Pep is a good manager, far inferior teams have beaten this Barcelona side. The difference between this result and City's last result is this time it was Barcelona who had several key players out injured instead of City.

8.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 08:23:10
City played brilliantly and deserved to win. They attacked with intelligence and speed. The midfield was excellent. And in silva and de bruyne, they have two midfielders with exceptional talent. The type we simply don't have.
I thought Sterling had a superb game too and is justifying the price city paid for him.
Agree with Beast, the last three managers we've had are all negative managers and we're seeing the problems now.
Mourinho will not change but if he gets the formula right, then we too can beat the top teams with the addition of a few players.

9.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 08:47:29
Schmid,

We''ve got Mata, Herrera, Mkhtaryan, Pogba . The difference is they either don't play or are not played to their strengths when they do play .
When Mourinho early in the season went on about how important Fellaini would be it said a lot about his mindset .

I don't doubt that Mourinho will get us winning and moving in the right direction but it would be nice to have someone in charge who believes in putting his attacking talent on the field in big games and encouraging them to play like a big team rather than a glorified version of a Tony Pulis team.

10.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 11:10:41
Sorry but when city beat us 2-1 pep majorly parked the bus second half.

11.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 11:38:02
We all know City have an excellent team with fast creative forwards and midfield. They had that last year too and then spent even more money than we did in the summer. Guardiola, coupled with their budget, will quite possibly see them finally get the success they really crave - a European title. Maybe not this year, but soon.

As for us, we remain unsettled. 3 managers. 3 different directions in 4 years. There are signs of improvement, but also some that are more troubling. And with the money sloshing around in the EPL now, the competition is all the stiffer. It makes our task even harder, but it also makes domestic dominance by City more unlikely too. They may find the Prem title more elusive than the European one.

12.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 12:16:58
Red79,

There's a difference between starting a game with a negative mindset and what Pep did against us . He set up to attack us and when in the 2nd half we went direct he reacted to that . Even at that City had a few great chances on the break .
you can't compare that to a manager going into a game to park the bus with the likes of Rashford and Young basically playing as full backs.

13.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 12:22:10
However you praise, City or Aguero or whomsoever.
They have De Bruyne, who is probably the best in his position in the world.
They paid a lot of money for KDB and he's showing that.
But our Jose, let him go at Chelsea and couldn't see the potential that the lad De Bruyne had.

14.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 13:24:08
I don't disagree bilko but I was pointing out that pep does park the bus when needed they finished that game with 6 defenders on the pitch plus defensive midfielders as well the result could of been quite different had lingard and miki not had mares and we took our chances I personally don't think mourinho is doing a bad job if we had scored some of the chances we have created we would be sitting top of the table and you can't blame the manager for players missing chances.

15.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 15:03:15
Rohan I read somewhere that José let kdb go because he wasn't prepared to fight for his place and wanted guaranteed first team football and at the time he wasn't the player he is now don't know I'd there is any truth to this though.

16.) 02 Nov 2016
02 Nov 2016 18:27:32
City love in has started again then I see.

17.) 03 Nov 2016
03 Nov 2016 11:47:26
Red 79 fergie did same with pogba.