Well you'll soon find out BAB.... Ingram in for Long (sends a bad message though we'd expect it).. Emmannuel in for Coyle (should have happened anyway) Burke in for Greaves (Greaves is left side not sure Alfie Jones can play there so maybe McLoughlin) Fleming in for Elder. Crowley (for `Honeyman who seemingly got proper kicking) Whyte for Magennis and maybe even Flores for Docherty.... I just wish we had a replacement for Wilks.. ????????
Hindsight's a wonderful thing(for me,not yourself).I was hoping he'd field the same team in order to grab 3 points,then rotate the players on Saturday against 'weaker' opposition.Of course after the event it wasn't such a good idea but if he(McCann) had tinkered and we'd have lost 3-0 he'd have been savaged by his critics.
He could have quite easily made 2 or 3 changes without upsetting the balance of the team .. it doesn't require wholesale changes .. sadly we know of his stubbornness and inability to change things especially on the back of a couple of good performances .. but one would like to think having seen the energy levels drop previously he would learn .. it certainly doesn't guarantee that we would have won last night but it would have been difficult to argue with his reasoning if he had have changed things while explaining the reasons. Alas again his communication skills let him down as he just gets defensive.
Exactly, mid week, middle of winter in deepest Lancashire, on a ****ty pitch isn't a time for playing three forwards and expecting 'free flowing football'. Its a battle with shirts sleeves rolled up and don't give an inch and it always has been for City at these places for as long as I can remember. You set your stall out to give them **** all and if it's on go for it in the last 15 mins or so. As for 'Cityittis', I've just finished Kevin Keegan's book and he said Manchester City suffered from that for years. Always looking for the banana skin and for things to go wrong. It was deep seated there until he changed the attitude of everyone, I say it is far more deep seated in these parts. A point away from home from a mid week fixture is a very good point, especially if sandwiched between two wins.
Indeed. Rotherham did it by the skin of their teeth last season, but before that you'd have to go back to 2013 for a team losing a quarter of its matches and finishing in the top 2.
Couldn't resist Ric, so looked quickly at the lge. 1 season finishes back 15 years to 2005/06. Lose 12 matches, you don't finish in the top 2. Lose 11 matches, you would have finished second on 3 occasions, so c20% chance of auto promotion. We've lost 7 so far, so reckon we can lose another 4 max to be in with a shout of auto promotion, plus we'd need to win at least another 12 matches, finishing on 87 points which might be enough to finish second. It's all fine lines, Joshs goal stands, or Wilks puts just one away and we could be looking at a very different result last night. Terry quoted as saying as much post last nights match. General view on here is that we have a strong enough squad with plenty of depth, that being the case if we miss out, the finger quite rightly should be pointed at Terry. If all these midweek matches are a potential problem, why is Terry so hell bent on winning the Pizza Cup if it's to the detriment of some of our league performances? Promotion surely has to be the one and only priority this season. Lack of clinical finishing may come back to haunt us, plus personally feel we are still lacking another experienced leader on the pitch, Smallwood has an off day, quite a few have an off day too it seems. All that said we've got ourselves into a great position, lets hope we can push on and make it!
I don't rate McCann, but I feel this is unfair on him. The Pizza Cup XIs have generally featured maybe one or two of the regular starters from the previous league matches – in fact I think they've been useful games for our fringe players in terms of giving them game time.
We were beaten by the pitch as much as anything. Fleetwood was the same. Our passes along the ground were to soft and so we went aerial a bit more and they were better than us in the air. Stanley knew the parts of the pitch that were sodden and played around them, we charged through and lost the ball. The commentary said that to defrost the pitch parts of it were watered. The KCOM may be muddy but it is still fast. Fratton park pitch was a great surface and we did well. Elder was suckered into a card and Burgess doing the commentary said that one of the players was a good actor, getting players carded for tackles. Ok we have Wilks but he goes to ground but does lay flat out and then is up and about without needing treatment. One of my mates compared it with an FA cup game when a PL club goes to the lower league and the pitch gives the home team an advantage.
If you look at the last 15 seasons on a points per game basis you need to average 2.07 points a game to win the league, 1.92 to finish 2nd and 1.61 points a game to finish in the play-offs. City at the moment are averaging 1.88 points a game.
**** night, **** performance. On an aside, West Ham went top 4 tonight, Jarrod Bowen has become an absolute sure thing in their starting 11, contributing goals and assists and that makes me a little bit happy.
My in laws are all spammer fans .. they love him .. they say their best 2 signings in recent years have both been from us .. Snoddy and Bowen .. says it all really
We are on 1.875 at the moment.'IF' we hadn't of ****ed up last night we'd be on 2,if we win on Sat we'll be on 1.92 so we'll be on schedule to finish 2nd......Stats eh
playing hoofball against Land of the Giants is never a good tactic but that's what McCann did by starting Magennis - yes the pitch was crap but we should have kept it on the ground and persevered but we didn't - many players had an off game but the tactics were all wrong
Its not as if he's a great header of the ball... or for me as good as Eaves at bringing play higher up the pitch.
I'll be amazed if that wild swing on Honeyman's shin hasn't resulted in a fracture. It was almost identical the kick Fagan got at Newcastle in 2008 that finished his season.
McCann : Players not tired. A Jones : We got sucked into playing a long ball game. Conclusion: Starting line up was psychologically always going to lead to a long ball game. We should have stuck with the exact same starting 11 we had against Portsmouth away. Impose our game on the opposition. We looked infinitely better when Whyte came on.
Your suggestion was to drop Coyle Jones and honeyman. I don’t think you or anyone in here would really have supported those changes.
There were a number of changes that could have been made while not making the team unbalanced or weaker .. Burke Emmanuel and Crowley being just three that could have come in
Will be waiting for the news on George with fingers crossed he is so important to the team. Thought Jones comments on the game showed a very honest assessment of performance. Still got a problem with McCanns press performance. Whilst Jones was honest about what happened how come Terry and Cliff don’t see it and make the changes to how we are playing. You never get McCann ever admitting that he got selection and tactics wrong and that’s a real problem to me. I like a manager that takes defeat on the chin and does not blame his players. Lastly though to George, I hope that he has just taken a nasty clout but is ok. When he is on form so is the team.