cityfanlee23

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.

I hope so, it’s always a risk bringing through young players at the top level so hopefully him and some of the others can get game time in the coming months as we need all the cover we can get next season if we go up. Plus it’s bloody exciting when you’ve got a young gem on your hands, sounds like he’s got the potential to go places if we develop him right

How was Nelson? Sounds like another very good performance, hopefully we have a gem on our hands here!

Didn’t see the match but I get the feeling from these posts we played well? 😂

Perfect opportunity to see where we are at, sadly my gut instinct on this is that we are going to get rolled over quite comfortably. Hope I’m wrong

That's fine, but nothing has happened yet, it's media speculation, don't understand why we are attacking someone over something that they haven't done. Plenty of things to shout at him for without this, but anyway, it's not going to stop people needlessly doing it so not sure why I hooked myself on commenting

What's he got to do with it though? If the club needs the money we can't reject it. We don't even know if there is an official bid yet, media has put a figure on a players head and people are attacking Rudkin for it.

And just to add, are people really trying to use this to attack Rudkin with?

Mixed emotions here, he's having a great season after a slow start, but I still personally think he's overrated by our fans and needs to step up further to make it as a top premier league player, it could happen as he's definitely shown he's shown improvement under Enzo and should continue to improve, so I think selling him now would be a very silly decision without an immediate replacement, but £30m is a decent sum. The other part of this equation that I can't shake from my head at present is the amount of fans that think it would be devastating to sell him, KDH has been great, but our squad even without him should be winning this league, the fact so many seem to think losing him now would derail our season really doesn't sound like confidence in the Squad/Enzo is high. Sure KDH would be a big loss, but so big it would derail an 8 point/13GD lead over southampton? Either way, I can't see him being sold without a replacement.

Completely agree with this, definitely a very good player in there, nothing flashy, but at the right club under the right manager he's a 7/10 player most weeks. Unfortunately just didn't work out here.

There is definitely going to be clubs picking up relatively cheap gems from Chelsea, they've spent so much money on their scatter gun transfer strategy there must be so many unhappy players there questioning their future.

Giovanni Reyna is linked with a loan move to Forest at the moment, 21 year old attacking midfielder who can play on both wings but primarily plays in the Maddison role, has a big future ahead of him but struggling for game time at Dortmund, I'm sort of hoping Forest do get him on loan, as it looks like Marseille could be trying to Hijack a permanent deal and I'd like to see him available still in summer. Dortmund are rumored to only want £15m for him at the moment. He has not really lived up to the potential but under the right manager he could still be a top-class player.