AyeDubbleYoo

Well we know the reason - injury crisis and impossible fixture list.

Guess the point of Man City is that you don't need CBs who are individually the best players in the league. The team as a whole is such a machine that the defence is very well protected. Of course, once the midfield isn't working and the machine starts creaking it's a different story.

No reason at all we shouldn't be winning this. Hopefully we have a good first half and actually finish a couple of chances.

Gabby can barely analyse which door lets him out of his house.

No, but what I mean is, you’re saying Barnes is a squad player but you want a better squad player than him? He’s probably one of the best forwards in the league who isn’t playing regularly. I agree about Schar and Pope, sure that’s already in the plans. Guehi and Botman could be our CBs come February.

Pretty much all of those shouldn’t be playing already TBH. Only Schar and Pope should be starters, and even Schar is probably one window away from replacement. Bit harsh to put Barnes in there.

I don’t think we’re getting worse, we’re just not managing to consistently play well for a few games in a row.

I knew it wouldn’t be given live, but I thought jt would look so bad on the replay they might have to give it.

Almost looked a handball in their first goal, but haven’t seen it in detail. For the guy who won the ball from Bruno.

Your lone striker is never going to be ‘that’ involved. Even Haaland basically just runs onto chances and knocks them in.

Antonio beat himself TBH, he was more interested in getting into fights than playing football. Absolute clogger.

I mean, they’ll never do anything just because consumers want it. They’ll only do it if they think they can make more money than they make now from TV.

I would probably still start Trippier if he was fit.

Aye, he was shocking. Really bad.

Yeah I know, but in the last few we’ve been better. Even last night we were very decent before both the goals. Totally outplayed West Ham in the first half. I’m not saying everything is great or perfect, it just feels a lot worse after games like last night.

If we’d won last night we would’ve been 6th. We’re 4 points behind 3rd. The last third of the game last night was terrible, but we put ourselves in a stupid position by letting in two soft goals and not finishing any of our chances. We don’t need to soul search after every defeat.

I’m disappointed by Tino’s attacking in general, maybe I assumed he’s a different type of player. He seems to prefer to slow the game down and take his time. I was expecting more of a flyer.

I don’t know why we’re so quick to jump to these conclusions. Howe takes a while to bring Hall in - the signing was a mistake and Howe hates him. Tonali doesn’t start as quick as we want - Howe didn’t sign him, doesn’t rate him and he should be sold. Despite being miles better than what we have.

No.

Not really, we signed his replacement and he's out injured for the season. We don't need to make things up, we have enough real problems

Some people might've left the Barnes sub for later or made a different one, but Joelinton was offering very little out wide and it looked like we didn't need his extra defending. Seemed like putting Barnes on was just about taking advantage of how much the better team we were. It made sense at the time IMO. I'm not sure if Willock had to come off for injury reasons anyway, seems more like Howe to leave the team longer.

If you're saying Howe didn't engineer this then you're just being wilfully ignorant. He gets no credit for when we have great combinations but gets all the stick when they look worse?

Like I said, Kelly looks bad so far, I was just saying he was signed as a long-term squad option who could cover LCB and LB in the same way Burn does. But not start too much in either position.

I do think ultimately we need a third midfielder to partner Bruno and Toni because Willock is too untidy and Joelinton isn't technical enough. But it does depend on what style of team we're trying to build.

Not sure, probably about the same as Burn but younger and available cheap.