Lotus

It's been like we've been playing with 10 men with him on the pitch tonight. All he's done is jog about and when he's got the ball he's rolled 5 yards to whoever's closest.

There's no glory in what Man City are doing. There's no test that at first seems insurmountable but by courage and determination is overcome. There's none of that. There's no romance, there's no 'great story' to it. Watching them play 90% of the league is like watching a heavyweight go a round with a 12 year old girl. This is a club that can, and has, outspent everybody. Bought some top players for top money and pays them obscene wages but also buys decent, nothing special players just to flesh out an already ridiculous squad, or to stop other clubs getting them and goes on to pay them far more than their worth just so they can sit, fat and richer than expected some towards the back of the team bus. They should win both cup comps. They should win the league. They should reach the last 4 of the CL every f*cking year. For the most part of their season their only trial is not to rise up and conquer a worthy opponent but just to not trip over their occasional incompetence.

I'm with you on this Wullie, just as I was last season after a few games when people were questioning him, but I'm a bit concerned about his lack of movement. Last season he was constantly running backwards and forwards across the line and always looking to make space. He's just running up and down the pitch at the minute, nowhere near as productive in terms of pulling defences about. I think the movement across the whole team is really poor in comparison to some teams so far this season, and let's face it, our gameplan was the same last season - keep it tight, play a very rigid game with no-one gambling or leaving their position and hope that our lethal strikers will put at least one away, even though we actually generally create very little for them both. Our football is light years away even from a team like Everton who pass and move the ball exceptionally well. I completely agree with this. It was hard to debate it last season though because people would just shout you down because of the points we were racking up (which was great). We need to evolve from there though and there's no signs of it yet. It's soo odd that a group with a sprinkling of such good footballers plays such tepid, predictable football!

The only thing he's got going for him is that it was Pardew's decision to buy him and not Carr's recommendation. Don't think Pardew's going to give up on him anytime soon either.

I think that the problem with 4-4-2 as we play it is that we have no penetration down the left and teams can seemingly waltz through our middle. It's quite odd to watch really. Is Simpson back?

They had a couple of decent balls in from the their left. Thought Perch should have done better their. They seemed to catch our CBs at 6s & 7s too. Another thing, sometimes you'd see Bigi press the ball a bit higher up and Gosling (who i don't dislike) was just ball watching leaving about half an acre behind him. He didn't seem to have good enough positional sense to play one of two in the midfield.

Decent player already, this lad. Hope he becomes a top player in time. Definitely the most assured looking of the younguns/reserves. Just looks like he knows what he's doing!

Thought he did well yesterday. Wouldn't cack it at the idea of him starting against Norwich tbh.

doesn't look that bad actually.... We won't see much of the ball with that line up imo. Well, Harper will i suppose...

At 6ft 4 i would say CB is his more natural position!

He writes as if Van Dijk is an alternative to Debuchy.

Wouldn't think either a too great an obstacle, actually. Gosling's not really had a good game for us yet and Vuckic is competing for a different position.

We're often poor after a international break and i don't expect this to be any different. We'll need 5 in midfield for this one or they'll waltz right through us with consumate f**king ease. If we play 5 in the midfield we could choke this game and catch them on the break.

Sounds daft but that block was worth a goal. Turned to be worth a point anyway!

Ba'a best performances in a 4-4-2 have been with the other striker running around doing the dirty work for him. Cole and Wham and Best for us last season (with an occasional blinder from Shola). Having a guy who's willing to run the channels, compete for the ball, flick it on, etc. Ba has good instincts and thrives off the opportunities having a hard working partner give him. Cisse is not a foil in a million years though. These guys are in their prime and have been successful playing their natural game. Neither one of them is is going to give up what comes natural to them when playing through the middle. They can't even do it for Senegal. They just don't work well together when both upfront and i don't think they'll ever do it with any consistency. Maybe the odd game or two but not for long.

Nice to see you back NM. You sticking around a bit longer this time? I miss those diatribes !!!

Contributes nothing when we have possession. Shame as most of the team play better as a 4-3-3 but we need FBs to provide width for that to be truly effective.

8th. Shame.

I didn't say Debuchy was bullshitting, something obviously did change but we don't know what it was and I don't know enough about Seydoux to have respect or not. You wouldn't sell your house for £160,000 if it was worth £200,000. Why should a club sell a player for less than he's worth? If I didn't want to sell my house but my wife did maybe I would make excuses why we shouldn't (this is getting ridiculous now). It's a good time to move, what with low interest rates and that. You should listen to her tbh.

It's been very poor (the fullback situation) tbh. We didn't even need to sign a RB we would have done just as well to sign a LB and move Santon across. If we identify 2-3 players per position that means we missed out on between 4-6 targets. Stupid really. We also needed a CB. We haven't signed a single 1st team player after finishing 5th on then prattled on about pushing on for the CL.

Resting Cisse on Thursday to rest him again on Sunday, makes sense like. Not resting him, Ba's form is better. Cisse to come on later.

Why? What will have changed? What changed in 4 months with Cisse? They'll have had their Champions League come January. I don't know what changed with Cisse. Different player and different club so not relevant. Won't Lille want to challenge for the CL for the following season? Won't they find it harder and more expensive to sign a replacement in January? Why would they be wiling to disrupt their season half way through by losing one of their better players?

Why? What will have changed?

Bet he won't.

I have a worry that the club will look back on this window and see it was an opportunity missed to really compete for a CL place. I don't think we'll come as close again next year. Our squad will be very stretched this season. We won't have the 'surprise package' thing going on like we did last season and Cisse will not average a goal a game throughout the year. We've missed a trick which is a shame. Not saying we'll fall away but, 6th-8th will be a fair position given our 1st team squad.