Man City Thread

Manchester City vs Bournemouth Full Match & Highlights 23 December 2017

Crystal Palace vs Manchester City Full Match & Highlights

Bristol 2 City 3, City scored 2 from fast break away counter attacks.

Bristol City vs Manchester City Full Match & Highlights 23 January 2018

Manchester City vs West Brom Full Match & Highlights 31 January 2018

http://betting-predictor.com/

City have been great this season but without a few strokes of luck table would be a lot closer. The fact City didn't go down to ten today is another testament to that. 

Guardiola with the explosive news that Raiola offered him Mkhitaryan and Pogba 2 months ago. Blimmin hilarious. 

He is the master of deflection

I imagine Raiola offers his clients to everyone every 6 months in the hope that one of the transfers sticks and he pockets another $20 million for doing fudge all.

With that said, Guardiola's shenanigans didn't go very well for him did it?

For a side that has been so dominant across the league this season, it looks like it’s going to be a weirdly anti-climactic finish. 

Pep's formation over the two legs was bonkers and reeks of arrogance. The refusal to play a typical 4-3-3 (and heaven forbid give up a little bit of possession) feels like it was your downfall.

From what I saw this morning the line up only served to have KDB get lost on the wing and Sterling and Sane get lost in the middle of the park with absolutely no space to work.

Just won the premier league in a canter, and should easily get the all time record points in a league season.

Imagine if he wasn't bonkers. 

https://twitter.com/etisalat/status/985567113489338369

https://twitter.com/KEY103NEWS/status/985581947144622081

Always a nothing club. No amount of money will change that.

those links gave me a good chuckle 

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/manchester-city-premier-league-title-champions-league-table-record-points-goals-highlights-pep-a8293481.html

Having introduced the squad to his vision of how a team should move in his first season, and getting them to try and comprehend the conceptualised map of a football pitch with 20 different zones to move between, Guardiola immediately began his second summer by concentrating on building play from the back. That was the main focus of preseason.

City are a good chance at breaking 3 records currently held by Chelsea.

Most goals in season - 103

Most wins in season - 30

Most points in season - 95

As a chelsea fan i take quite a bit of pride in those records so kinda hoping City players are mentally focused on the World Cup now and drop a few games.

In my opinion that was Mourinho's best ever league season in his career. Just about the only one where his team looked like entertainers, and wanted to play.

Those were from 3 different seasons

103 goals - 2009/10 under Ancelotti. We were ruthless that season. Had wins of 8-0, 7-0, 7-1, 7-2

30 wins - 2016/17 under Conte

95 points - 2004/05 under Mou. So clinical that season. 29 wins, 8 draws, 1 loss. 95 points. Only 15 goals conceded. Carvalho and Terry at the back. 

Wow I did not expect that, so confident I didn't even check!

Very surprising. 

Mourinho certainly didn't have the bus-parking reputation in his younger days. 

He really was more innovative back then, no one was playing a 4-3-3 in that era until he came along. 

Yes that early 4-3-3 we played was fun to watch with Duff, Drogba and Robben

Over a year ago since a post on here. Where are all the "life long Man City fans"?? Supporting Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs??

I'll chime in - this whole domestic treble stuff is nonsense. Then only reason a domestic treble hasn't been done in the past is because clubs used to treat the league cup as a second tier competition.

But now when you have money hungry grubs like Mahrez and Stones on the bench I suppose you can just play them instead.

=)

And why is that fault of Manchester City? I think it's good that they took all the competitions they were playing in seriously. 

No fault of City's. Fault of journalists.

I don't follow. The reason that other clubs didn't take the league cup seriously in the past was journalists, or the only reason City are taking the league cup seriously is journalists?

I seem to remember Liverpool taking the league cup seriously in the eighties.You must mean the more recent past?circa 1992?

I think the common treatment is for the bigger teams to give chances to youngsters in the early rounds, and then put full strength sides out in the semis/final etc. That's been happening for a good 20 years as far as I remember, cannot comment before that, wasn't really across it. 

In the last 17 years, it has been won by sides outside of the current "big 6" just three times (Swansea 2013, Birmingham 2011 and Middlesbrough 2004). In that same period, the FA Cup has been won twice by non-big-6 sides (Portsmouth 2008, Wigan 2013). 

Between 2003-04 and 2005-06, when it first began collecting the data, Opta recorded three instances of Premier League games in which one team had 70% or more of the ball. Two seasons ago there were 36. Last season there were 63. This season there were 67.

That is a radical change. In 15 years, instances of these games have increased by a factor of more than 60. One in six games now is effectively attack against defence. The Premier League’s three relegated teams took only four points against the top six – and all of those have been against Manchester United in the past fortnight, which barely counts.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/19/m...

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/19/m...

Yea all good stats, interesting stuff that.

But it actually isn't related to the discussion about the League Cup, and how seriously the bigger clubs take it?

Something to temper those stats somewhat, was the popularity of "tika taka" style football, that came on the scene with Barca's resurgence in the mid-2000s.

Prior to that we had ManU and Arsenal dominating the Premier League, and at the time neither team had a style based on possession football. The earlier Wenger teams often went through matches with less than half of possession from memory, certainly never anywhere near 60-70%, they were known for deadly counter-attacking, and Fergie's mantra was always to do something purposeful with the ball, he didn't like possession for the sake of it.

When Arsenal switched to heavy possession football around 2007, we lost to ManU pretty regularly despite dominating the ball, as an aside. 

Later we had a team like Leicester win the league, and I believe from memory they barely played a game where they had more than 50% possession, which was quite astonishing. 

We are now in a space where Man City are dominating with posession-based football, so will be interesting to see if that catches on again. 

But journalists

https://www.whoscored.com/Regions/252/Tournaments/...

Another interesting point about the dominance of the top 6. Tottenham had the 6th highest revenue, which was almost 200m pounds higher than Everton in 7th. Man Utd highest revenue about 200m pounds more than Tottenham. The top 6 combined is almost 3billion pounds in revenue. Probably more than than the rest of the EPL and the football league combined. 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/may/22/p...

They don't really have to take the league cup seriously and just by the quality of their squads should allow them to do well.

This is horrific positioning. Honestly, at professional level I think it's as bad as what Adrian did today.

Not only is he off he line and a metre to the wrong side, his hopping in the air when the ball is struck so he can't react to it either.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/world-game/300056105/manchester-city-overturn-twoyear-ban-from-champions-league

Was always going to be overturned. Slap on the wrist and see you next time. What is the point of even having rules?

If only the rules were what mattered, rather than how much money and lawyers you can throw at it.

The issue is that the punishment for interfering is lighter/softer than the punishment for the offence.

This makes it a simple economical decision - what costs more, missing out on the champion's league of interfering in the investigation?

City chose interfering and UEFA weren't able to establish a case.

I havent read too much into it, but my understanding was that they did indeed establish a case, Man City were found guilty, and the new ruling is simply a reduction in punishment, rather than them being found not guilty?

If that is correct, then it's absurd. Essentially they've just paid a fee to be able to cheat the rules and stay in the comp.

I wonder which FIFA officials divided the 10 mill?