cityfanlee23

I think people would be willing to give more patience if we could see a pattern of improvement even if it was slow. So far we’ve seen a regression since the early few games and we look completely over coached and unwilling to take many risks even when we have the quality to bury games quickly (not that this is always the expectation but we don’t even attempt to) At the moment the people who are talking about how good we will be when we “click” have every right to do that, but it’s not based on any evidence, just faith. Based on the regression we’ve seen over the last 5-7 games where we’ve looked less dangerous and more prone to mistakes, it looks at this moment in time less like the team is “gelling” and “close to clicking” and more like a new manager bounce is wearing off. I’m not saying the NMB is the reason why we are top, not at all but it’s definitely a factor as there’s no doubt Enzo has shifted the feeling around the club dramatically, but there’s just no real evidence that we are improving. It’s very early days, but if fans are expected to be patient there has to be some visible improvements and they don’t need to be dramatic.

Completely understand the sentiment behind this and it is logical, but the flip side of the coin is that in the majority of games we have dominated and won, we have come perilously close to throwing points away. We could easily have won the games we’ve lost/drawn and realistically should have been punished/dropped points in many games we’ve won but haven’t due to the opposition not taking their chances when they really should. So on both of those sides of the coin we are somewhere in the middle, but with the quality we have we shouldn’t be going so late into games on a knife edge. A lot of us, myself included had memories of the championship from the last time around where we spent a decade stuck in the 2nd division and thinking its one of the most difficult leagues in world football to get out of, statistically it is, but I think we’ve all seen this season just how awful the standard has been this season. The sheer amount of chances our opponents (and us) have wasted this season is quite shambolic at times.

People have been very caught up in the romance created by such a sudden shift in culture and the building of a “winning mentality”, which we needed and full credit to Enzo for that, he deserves the plaudits for turning the ship around in such a short period of time, but like you it seemed to me that too many people were getting swept up in that and have more often than not completely ignored obvious cracks because of the fact we are top and under the illusion that it will suddenly “click”. Logically it does make sense that we would get better over time, but there is no evidence of this yet. Rather than looking like it’s “clicking” this seems more and more like a “new manager bounce” but I don’t believe for a moment that that’s all this is, just that I think this new energy and enthusiasm for a new way of playing has contributed a lot to our early success. We had exactly the same under Ranieri, Shakespeare, Puel and Rodgers before eventually it caught up with them and the football quickly stopped working and they couldn’t find solutions. It’s not even that I think Maresca is unable to find solutions, more that he’s unwilling by his own admission, I just hope he’s right that it will all come good in the end. In a round about way it’s similar to the early days of the Rodgers debate where the credit Rodgers had built with the fans completely plastered over the cracks that were forming on the pitch and blind optimism took control for a good 12 months where it was just expected that we would be fine. Until we weren’t. Hopefully this is just a blip and we improve the style and pickup form again.

Is it working relative to the talent we have though? you could argue yes and no on that imo, it's working in terms of the table, but given how hard a lot of us thought the championship would be, it's actually been far less competitive than I was expecting and the quality of chances wasted by out opponents has been quite shocking.

I just feel like we are not getting anywhere near the most out of the players, and in quite a few aspects this approach is actively stifling players. Look at Vardy, Kelechi, and Mavididi, all capable players who can contribute so much more but Vardy and Kel are often playing off scraps (and they are being wasteful unfortunately) and Mavididi more often than not runs at a defender then turns back and passes backward rather than taking his man on. Then look at players like Winks, I've mentioned this before but he's miles above this level, we can all see that, yet of his 1567 passes attempted this season, only 346 have been FORWARDS, meaning roughly 22% of his passes are forward and 78% are sideways and backward, he's had 7 shots this season, of his 1495 successful passes, 1425 of them are categorized as "short passes" but I'm not 100% sure what the distance threshold is on that, but we can all see that his game is typically safe and very rarely is he able to really break open teams with his passing, this being the symptom of the system. Don't get me wrong his contribution has been fantastic and he's clearly the midfield general of the team in this system, but I feel like he's being wasted, I feel like most of the top half team's midfielders could achieve these numbers in this squad or get close. I'm not trying to downplay him, if anything it's a compliment as I truly believe he's a far better player than the one we are seeing, and that goes for a fair few others. Credit on some players though, KDH, Hamza, Vesty and Ndidi have all shown improvements.

I really hope Danny Rohl is given time, was very excited by his appointment based on his CV as an assistant and who he's worked with, few Wednesday players have said he's only been there a few weeks and is immediately showing he's the real deal and are fully getting behind him. Early days yet but Rohl could be a manager destined for a good career in the European top flight somewhere.

Puel did the same thing, his first few months we were hitting teams on the counter and looking dangerous, and players like Gray were getting the ball at their feet and putting their head down and running, over time that slowed down significantly and that seems to be the same here but over a shorter period of time.

My bad on that one mate, i thought I was posting that response in the post-match thread, got my threads mixed up.

I know I've been banging this drum since probably the 3rd match, so it won't come as a surprise to anyone, but I'm just bored beyond belief. We had a huge job to do in the summer and credit to Enzo he did it really well, signed some really decent players (some not great but were logical signings), and shifted the culture of the club, but I just can't stand watching us, I LOVE watching Man City, as people may know I absolutely love watching the Red Bull philosophy also, so I do understand and appreciate styles of play that are not traditional approaches, but we approach the game in such a slow and labored way. I desperately want Enzo to wake up and change something, but I'm utterly convinced he won't. Since the first few games when I said we needed to up the tempo and be more progressive, people rightly pointed out that over time we should improve and "click" and I completely understood that, but it's very telling now seeing such a big shift in people getting fed up with the sloppiness and labored play, there is absolutely no evidence that we are going to "click" in this system, and it was EXACTLY the same under Puel, Puel was building something, in fact his job was even bigger than the one inherited in summer as we had a declining squad with few saleable assets and an aging squad that was very one dimensional. It's becoming very obvious that we are winning games mainly through quality, with the system of "tiring them out" accompanying the quality, but in reality, with the quality we have, we should not be aiming to win games in the final15 minutes, we could and should be finishing them before the hour mark with the quality we have. As much as Enzo has turned us around, if he left next week I probably would not be that gutted. I still like him a lot, I know all of this sounds silly when you look at the table, but the style is not improving, he is not changing anything, and we should be playing better. You can only beat who is in front of you, but every week we come away saying "thankfully the opposition wasted many chances"

We really need to improve. It's simply not good enough and honestly, I think given the quality we have there are plenty of managers in this division that would have us in this position or close to it.

Even if he does, I think it's a given that we will do it again next game. Enzo so far has not shown he's learning or if he is, is too stubborn to change.

I don't think we have a very good system. Personally I think you need Elite players to make Enzos blueprint functional. Hope you're right though

Danny Rohl will be a very good manager in future. Hope Wednesday stick with him.

We are fortunate to get a point here to be honest, point gained?

Fully deserved.

It's very frustrating, and please for context understand that I'm NOT saying we should ditch Enzo or the blueprint we are trying to create, but I can't help but feel there are plenty of attainable managers out there that would have got more out of this group than we are in terms of general quality of play. I know this season we have played "our way" and done it quite effectively in terms of controlling the ball and getting results over the line, but with the quality we have, I just feel like a more traditional approach would have yielded far more comfortable results on paper this season, so many players just seem wasted at times.

Yeah agree, I can't put my finger on why though, I was one of the few who thought we should stick with Puel to build since he had overseen a huge transition from an older squad to a much younger one, in hindsight obviously going for Brendan was the right decision for the first couple of seasons before the wheels fell off, but Puels team very often tried to pass it in the goal and struggled to transition. I vividly remember Puel on the sideline absolutely screaming at them to attack and push forward and the players just blatantly ignoring him, I've seen that once or twice under Enzo too.

He's been shockingly average since arriving, really strange as he's the best defender in the club based on experience and proven ability in the top flight, had a difficult season at Everton but so did everyone, I was not expecting him to be so average at this level but I wonder if the system just doesn't suit him, or if he has not settled? He's miles better than this, well, he should be.

I haven't said this on FT as far as I remember, but I think we are showing striking similarities between Enzo/Puel. But the squad we are attempting it with now are just nowhere near the level we had then. And I hate to say it but Puels football to me felt like it had more purpose. I appreciate Puel was not trying to "tire teams out" but often we seem to not really understand when the moment is to press the button and attack.

I know I'm looking too far ahead and likely overconcerned when we are not even up yet, but not only do we need a rebuild to replace players who are clearly not good enough, which I think with the step up will be quite a few, but we also will effectively be going into the season tactically blind, because we won't be playing anything like the style of football we have done this season where we command the ball and control the tempo all match, I'm hoping the fundamentals can be transferrable into a new system, but when we go up I think we could easily need half a squad and a very different tactical approach to learn also. But I know, I'm well ahead of myself here!

Yes

I was hoping you were going to suggest falling asleep on the sofa....

Don't.

I hope you're right but this is a regular occurrence, maybe not as error-prone as this but we are awful most first halves and nothing is changing.