2018 Roster Discussion
- Thread starter The Toe
- Start date
He's played less than 10 minutes. My god. So we need a CB and box to box CM during the transfer window.
REALLY REALLY nice guy by the way. Isi and Sean and Jo too.
I'm not in the media scrum either. Just wondering how you're meeting all these guys after the match.
City send off. My son's birthday. And I got to hang out in the lounge area And see some people before the players came out.
Lol thanks man. He ate a big helmet of ice cream and sneezed on James Sands. Good day at the office for him.
Homegrown hazing.
Any good info on Pep's tactics if this Rodolfo Borrell takes over? Seems like Man City was a 4141 like us in the beginning of the year and then went to a 3142? What do we need to implement roster wise?
<sarcasm>I wonder if anybody has made a video on Youtube about City under Guardiola ...</sarcasm>
Sorry, that was a little tongue-in-cheek and came off more acerbic than I meant it to.
Less snarky response with a hazy timeline from a self-described "casual City fan". Man City in 2017-18:
- 4-1-4-1 with a bit of 3-5-2. Presumably a little bit of an experiment plus trying to make room for Aguero and Jesus.
- Mendy gets injured. Jesus / Aguero injuries here and there.
- Playing a solid 4-1-4-1 now. Delph becomes a CDM on attack but Walker continues to fly up the pitch. Silva and De Bruyne as twin 8-10s with a license to underlap. I'd say this was their style of play for 70% of the season.
- Late-season wobbles. Loss to Man United sandwiched by losses to Liverpool in the CL.
- Pep rolls out an occasional 4-4-2 when he's finding it hard to get the ball moving quickly enough to penetrate against teams that park the bus. This basically means throwing Sterling in the middle to confuse defenders who have been contending with a solo striker, and hitting teams on the counter-attack.
I think our roster feels pretty similar to City's in 17-18. Startlingly similar, actually. For Mendy, who is a really attacking left back who dealt with injury issues, we have Matarrita, who is a really attacking left back who dealt with injury issues. Sweat is maybe more of a Delph, in that he looks slightly more confident / less-shit when he's not being asked to overlap and consistently swing in good crosses. Ring is our answer to Fernandinho, in that our entire system falls apart if he can't play. Neither City or we have a right back who can tuck in and play centrally like Delph. Villa is Aguero. Berget was supposed to be Jesus. City have Sterling, Sane, Bernardo Silva as wingers and Gundogan, David Silva and De Bruyne as playmakers. We have Isi, Medina, Lewis and Wallace.
Focusing on where I think we need to improve:
- Figure out a less injury-prone left back / wing back situation.
- Find legit back-up for Ring. Maybe this is Sands?
- Coach Saad and / or Scally to play as an inverted full back / CDM. I think Tinny is too old to learn the on-the-ball awareness for this position, and we can't afford 4 RBs.
- Find our version of De Bruyne. Herrera is physical enough but not good enough with the ball. Ofori not yet dominating enough, may never. Isi could do the offensive work there but I don't think he has a box-to-box engine. I don't know if we will ever be City-level dominant until we can find a player who can do it all from the middle of the park. Maxi is probably more our David Silva equivalent.
- Find a successor for Villa who can fill a different position across the front 5 while Villa is still around and producing.
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Us? I guess the sell Mata this summer is still the plan.
Maybe. Maybe not. The player is free this summer from my understanding.
Everyone agrees the current LB situation isn't good. Maybe they just want an upgrade.
Everyone agrees the current LB situation isn't good. Maybe they just want an upgrade.
Good stuff. Does anyone else play with inverted backs or is this just a Pep thing?
So I met Maxi Moralez today, he came to my school with a former teammate of his (potential hererra replacement?... unlikely) and he seemed like a really nice guy. Asked him about Spider-Man, says he does it because his son loves Spider-Man.
So either you're a teacher, or an actual NYCFC kid...
Was he touring the school for his kid? Doing a community effort thing?
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