Taylor Swift

But Rich, surely you must see that we still have a major problem creating chances. We created plenty of half-chances today but they're the percentage football BS type of chances instead of actually carving open the other team and then having a clear cut unmissable chance. Sam's style of attacking seems to be more desperation and hoping for inspiration rather than actually have a clear plan of attack. It's like 'let's launch balls into the pen area, hope the second ball falls to our guy then hope the guy's good enough to score'. It's just ridiculous that our attack solely consisted of that in the second half of the game against the WORST team in the Premiership. The center midfield pairing also isn't helping in that Butt cannot be the creative guy but he's forced into spraying those long balls because Barton just isn't up to much nowadays. City may be an aberration in terms of goals differential and the fact that Micah Richards is a freak of nature. But just look at Arsenal though, 5 clean sheets in 18 games says a lot about their ability to defend but because they know how they're going to attack and have faith and belief in it, they have always scored more than the opposition, and yet I have no qualms saying their defence and goalkeeper are quite dodgy. All in all, I just think we have a problem creating chances and it's a problem that's equally as big as the defensive one and probably more relevant when we struggle to create anything against the likes of Reading, Sunderland and Derby (away game). Edit - we picked up 1 point out of the 3 away games against Sunderland, Reading and Derby not because of our inability to defend, but because of our inability to dictate the pace of the game and create enough chances for our strikers. Imo.

The one that Real fans watched Edit - I still don't think there's anything wrong with what I said!

Richards is the key to Citeh. Though I've heard people say that Dunne is helping Richards along, I reckon it's the other way around in that Dunne can be more aggressive when defending because if he cocks up there's this big pacy kid waiting to clean up. I mean, how many times have you seen the opposition get a 1v1 vs Richards and Richards coming out on top? I think I see it at least once or twice a game (in the games that I've seen Citeh play), and for comparison's sake, if it was any other defender in the league, they wouldn't have had the pace to catch up and it would be a 1v1 for the opposition player and the City gk. Richards is the real difference maker.

Barca didn't deserve any penalties nor did they deserve most of the fouls their players asked for. The amount of diving in the game from both sides was insane. Half the team would have been sent off if that happened in the Premiership! Real deserved it tbh, some of their counter-attacks were exquisite and they looked more likely to score than Barca in the second half. Raul's still class, did anyone see the move with a couple of mins left? A clever flick to VRoy then when he received the ball back schooled Abidal and showed him what football class really means. Legend. Sergio Ramos.. wow. Big match, fantastic performance. Some of his lung-bursting runs from defence was simply awesome to see and of course he had Ronaldinho in his back pocket from start to finish. My MOM. Pepe also had a decent game and so did Heinze. Dos Santos was surprisingly quiet and was marked out of the game by Heinze from the moment he came on until the end. The decision to bring on Bojan was laughable though. WTF?! A 17 year old unproven kid over someone like Thierry Henry? The hype that the kid's been getting is insane compared to what he's actually done and I can't believe Rijkaard sent him on instead of Henry (who iirc scored a peach of a goal the last time he played Real).

The ref's giving nothing to Barca and everything to Real today. I'm loving it

What a move. What a goal.

Ronaldinho's starting! Good fiesty start.

Taylor was dreadful making good clearances? Something the other two didn't do all afternoon I guarantee he wouldn't have been fucking nutmegged on that goal, either. Granted, he'd have probably ran him over for a yellow, but we'd have not lost today. We didn't lose, mate Though it sure feels like one.

It's a method of defending as far as I'm concerned (pressing). I don't see how it should dictate the way we attack, and because I currently see no shape nor a real way that our attacks work, I'm worried that Allardyce hasn't got his priorities sorted.

Hire a coach to teach him "how to play like Bellamy" Or else really, get some cash back. No wonder Inter sold him. His partnership with Adriano must be a nightmare (for Inter). This must be some kind of wind up. Oba's goal record is twice that of the gimp. 17 goals last season, when did Bell end last score 17 in a season? People need to relax with the stats and see how the team is actually performing. See the shape of the team, the style of footie we're playing and whether we tend to look more likely to score than the opposition. For the most part of this season, we've always looked less likely to score than the opposition and that is because of the way we play. It needs to be changed. Martins contributes to the shapeless ineffective performances that we keep put in. Bellamy contributed to brilliant attacking organized performances when he was here. That's the key difference between the two players, not the fact that one can score a few more goals than the other. TEAM over individual tbh.

He's even worse than Parker when he's played in midfield though

the problem is our club should be better than your club.... I actually agree with this

I know he's not going to become like Zidane and starts floating around players with delicate little touches but we've seen minimal or actually no improvement in his first touch since he arrived. Surely coaches are there to actually coach these things? If not, what the fuck do they actually do?

Ashley Cole's been shite today. Same old as far as he's concerned though. Lots of diving, lots of piss-taking and a fuckload of careless passes. Overrated is his middle name.

Finally some sense. And uttered in a much more eloquent manner than I've seen many other people try

How hard is it to improve your first touch though? Fucking hell, if I was Sam, the only thing I'd make Martins do would be to receive passes from one of the coaches. Hell, I'd even appoint some fucking loser to just pass the ball repeatedly to Martins for the whole day. Surely that must help him?

A draw was a fair result, but that's the really sad thing. It was actually a fair result for both teams

I think there's a conspiracy between the other 19 teams in the Premiership to beat us. Every time one of our attacker jogs towards their defender, they hoof it up, aiming for our central defenders, then our central defenders robotically head it towards the center of the park and their midfielders pick up the ball and go on the attack. It's quite ingenious actually. Credit to every team who's used this insanely awesome tactic on us

Well, is it really a concidence that championship sides suddenly look much better when they play against us? Then we have to listen to tv commentators exclaiming how remarkable that Derby are doing so badly when they play as well as this! The truth is we keep resorting to percentage football against sides that just need to be spanked with good attacking football on the floor. Their two centre backs were probably the slowest and most stupid defenders in the top two divisions but we couldn't exploit that because we were too busy looking for route one which they enjoyed immensely bless 'em.

Chelsea beating Blackburn 1-0. It's actually a really good game as well. Reid has hit the post and fat Frank has just done it 10 seconds ago as well.

Someone said it in another thread, maybe it was even you Big Tron, but we let them play today. We've let many teams play this season (Reading, Sunderland, Derby etc.) and it's cost us a lot of points. For starters, we'd be in the top 6 if we won away at Derby and won today. We let them play today but hoofing it long at every opportunity. I was dying to see how Derby would defend if Shay had decided to pass the ball to one of his fullbacks instead of hoofing it up. Honestly, it was desperation football, and that might have been why the stats showed that we had 25 or so shots on target.

I know mate, but it was always going to be an inconsistent year, a transition year. People need to thing about the bigger picture and remember that we weren't going to be challenging for much anyway. We weren't going to be challenging even if we had appointed a different manager eg. Sven. Patience and belief. Keep the faith!

Wecome to one of my posts Sept 2007. I know Parkster You need to get that other thread up and running again.

We just don't have enough quality players atm. Sure, we've been let down by some poor performances but we've also done well against the better teams (Everton, Spurs and Villa come to mind). Just look at Everton today. Deserved a point at Old Trafford. Held their own, scored a nice goal and then defended resolutely for 60 mins until a daft mistake gave the point away. But, we beat them, and deservedly so as well. We expect too much from the team atm, imo.

We just lack the class to open teams up atm. Viduka's got the class to finish things off, same with Owen and I'd even say Martins. But creating chances, who do we have? Emre? The man who the fatty sends on with 15 minutes left in each game? Him? Milner? Duff? We lack some genuine class in the center of the park but this can be solved in the transfer window...