cityfanlee23

I’m not suggesting we could sign him as I think he would likely get a position at a more established prem club like Brighton or West Ham, but what do people think about Scott Mctominay? He comes across as severely underrated for me, every time he plays for United he puts in a decent performance and is a very honest player who leads by example. He’s constantly coming up with winning goals/assists/created chances and yet regardless of what he does he’s constantly back on the bench. Deserves to be treated better in my opinion and I’d take him if he was available. Don’t think he’s on a mindblowing wage there either. He’s made 24 appearances and averaged 57 minutes, most of his minutes came in the first half of the season and has played as a DM, CM, CAM and even as a “shadow striker” or whatever you call that position. Versatile, young, rumoured 60k a week, proven premier league talent, contract up in 2025.

I don't think he's the worst tactician in the league by a long shot, but with that said, we have put in so many howlers this season with arguably the best team in the division. Even games where we've won comfortably we've had really poor first halves on a regular basis, with the squad we have, we should be absolutely dominating teams like tonight but we are not. We've had way more howlers than truly outstanding performances relative to our quality.

No.

I sincerely hope the club are not looking at it this way. The premier league is potentially what, 11 games away? and this team needs at minimum 10 new players who can all play the way we want.

If we go up we are in serious trouble playing this way. Take the points but my god, we need to spend an absolute fortune or Rudkin needs to perform transfer miracles

This is a VERY different Sunderland to the Mowbray team we played before. Bloody hell, should be 3-0 already but we take that goal, hopefully get another quickly and put the game to bed.

Can't see it. Hope I'm wrong but at this moment in time, I think we will scrape up in the top 2 this season, then get absolutely humbled in the premier league and Enzo will be gone before Christmas. Enzo is utterly defiant and will play this system regardless of the players he has, in the championship we have a bit of wiggle room because ultimately our players are by far some of the best in this division and that quality is seeing us through, not in the premier league though, we don't have the finances to go out and spend the 150m+ required to get this team into a technical position to be able to play this against the premier league teams. I am biased because I don't think this system works without top-class talent and I'm a gegenpress fan myself, I just cannot see us being able to pull of the 7-8 top class (cheap) signings required to make it work.

Yeah I think I may have hit my head repeatedly before typing that

I think this season they have made steps to turn around the mess they oversaw over the last few seasons, they have appointed a manager who has managed to turn the ship around, and obviously for most of this season has built a lot of belief in his system with much of the fan base and players who are sticking to it. Financially they have invested wisely this season, and we were never in a position to accommodate infinite signings. Ultimately it’s become clear that in order to play the way we want to, we needed more players which was simply not possible given we have the highest wage budget in the history of the 2nd division, a completely unsustainable wage at this level. The only issue I have with the owners at present is the lack of communication. The next big test is deciding what we do in summer, but that relies on which division we are in and how we achieve it. We need our fan groups to really force this issue and demand the owners talk to the fans or at minimum give us statements 3-4 times a season with updates on the club. But overall I don’t think they’ve done much wrong since relegation. Still a long road ahead to regain trust. I really don’t understand the argument that not spending more in January is their fault. They shouldn’t need to given the players we have.

Thankfully I’m not paid to fix these issues, but my thoughts would be if you don’t have the players to play a very specific and complex way, don’t play that way until you do, play a way that works to their strengths, and try to implement the system over time. So far it’s worked out but if we keep dropping points something has to give as the teams around us are playing pragmatic football and they are cutting the gap.

Only if Enzo refuses to change. If he plays to the teams strengths a bit more but within a loose structure of controlling the ball we have more than enough quality to comfortably go up. If he continues to be stubborn and refuses to change even when it’s clearly not working in relation to the opposition setup, personnel, or both, then we could end up in trouble. I have absolutely no faith in his ability to put his ideals aside so I’m just hoping we have enough quality to get this over the line.

I think controlling the ball is pretty much the only aspect of Man City’s play that we have adopted. Man City are very effective at “pushing the button” to attack, they go long, they play through balls through the middle, they have overlapping full backs. We don’t really attempt any of that, I think we assumed he was trying to adopt Man City’s style but in the end we are quite far away, and to be honest I no longer believe it’s because we don’t have the players capable of doing it, the parts of our game that are missing are often the most simple aspects of the game (overlapping wingbacks)

I think it’s purely down to playing style, I’ve honestly no idea why we signed him, he’s a premier league defender in the right system. I can imagine pretty much any other manager would walk into us day 1 and promote him to the starting 11. It’s really strange and a perfect example of why we can’t afford to sign an 8.

To be honest, Leadership begins in the managers office. We have plenty of characters who have been leaders before. Vestergaard was very much a leader at Southampton, Vardy has been a leader, Albrighton is very experienced and can be part of a leadership group, Coady is a leader, Winks is massively experienced and can be encouraged to lead, Vardy has been a leader of sorts. Why are none of these players stepping up where they have stepped up before? The fact we continue to play a guy guilty of drink driving on the wrong side of the road is a massive lack of leadership. Someone needs to grab these experienced players and tell them to pull themselves together because it’s clearly not coming from the top, whether that be coach or board level.

There’s definitely been an arrogance from a large section of fans that if you aren’t fully sold on the tactics or even dislike them, then you’re just too stupid to understand them. Our league position is great and we’ve had a big turnaround in fortunes, but there seems to be this consensus (on here atleast) that we are only top because of Enzos system, and that we couldn’t be top with any other. I like Enzo and I’m accepting his system is here to stay until the day he goes, so I’ve found more enjoyment in it, but I just wish he would be a bit more pragmatic, too many occasions this year we would have imo absolutely rolled teams over if we had adopted a different way of playing. (And no, I don’t mean route one before anyone assumes)

Having that amount of premier league quality and a raft of top championship players. Vestergaard Vardy Iheanacho Daka Albrighton Hermansen All of those would get into the top 3 teams in this league. Need I go on? You’ve made a really convenient case that because of Enzo’s genius we masked flaws, but when it’s not going so well during games throughout the season it’s because the players are weak and we needed to strengthen. Enzo when we win, players and board when we lose/throw points away. So many games this season we’ve been below par for large parts of the game but our sheer quality at this level has seen us through. In reality, the main issue is we have a VERY strict way of playing that most of our squad are obviously not competent enough to play and see games off. Yet we continue to adopt the same style, and if plan A doesn’t work, Plan B is pretty much the same footprint but we try to do it better.

I can’t disagree with that I think it’s 6-of-1 half a dozen of the other. We were not really in a position to make widescale changes, so it’s on the manager to not blow it by switching up the style if we don’t have the players to play the way he wants yet. But he absolutely refuses to change, and that concerns me massively.

Our team is more than good enough to get promoted as it is. We’ve spent 75% of the season talking about “how the hell did we get relegated with these players” Our bench players would get into most of the championship teams. Our squad could maybe do with a bit of balancing, but overall there’s no excuses for not being promoted.

Yeah there’s definitely multiple factors involved but I think the point really is that our incredible goals conceded record has been slightly flattered this season. We probably should have conceded more goals if the opponents were not so wasteful. We also have been incredibly wasteful in attack. Missing so many easy chances as well as not attacking when clear options are available.

We only had such a good defensive record because of the poor level of championship attacks. Pretty much every match this season we have got away with making massive errors and been let off by poor finishing. Our defensive record has been massively deceiving relative to our performances defensively.

I know we have a mentality issue in a lot of players, but it is really getting a bit silly the sheer amount of people that have given Enzo this god status. Whenever we win he’s a genius and when we lose it’s a player mentality issue. Hes obviously done a great job but we have put in way too many absolute stinkers this season, fortunately we have the quality in the team to win a lot of them and we often are a 2nd half team. I think we will win today, but the performance is nowhere near good enough from everyone involved.

I’m an idiot, opened the wrong tab.

I like the look of Japhet Tanganga, currently on loan at Milwall from Spurs, primarily a CB but he can play at RB too, seems quite comfortable on the ball, he’s strong and fast and defensively looks quite solid. He put in a hell of a performance against City a couple of seasons ago but has been a bit stale there, One to keep an eye on for the rest of the season, his season didnt start well, he was on loan at Augsburg and got injured before the season started then couldn’t break into the team on his return, came back and was loaned out to Milwall and he’s finding his feet very quickly there, been one of their best players in his 6 appearances so far. Early days but looks like he could be a late bloomer.

Has he posted the meme yet???? YOU JUST GOT

Players look like they are up for it but the quality isn’t really there for both sides, Bournemouth probably edged the second half in the end but fortunately they were poor in the final 3rd. Not much to make of this game really, perfect opportunity to test our formation against premier league opposition, but at the same time can understand resting players.