Why aren't we playing our own game?

[fuchsntf]

Dan, only a few weeks ago, you were saying, I think, that City was clearly better than most of the teams around us. I urged caution. This is why....

West Brom are no mugs. They have not lost in five games, came with a game plan and executed it. They came to thwart us and nick one. And did so.

Their players and their tactics far exceed the Championship teams. They are an established, solid, difficult to beat side.

How some of our fans have underestimated the opposition this season is barmy. It really is.

well posted, this is the essence of many posters estimations.Even now this thought has been challenged. These

teams can pick up points, even when it seems against us they are no better on the day, its that tick of experience, on shape,

positioning, not falling off, in every single move and periods of every single game.

We hear about being game fit, but there is a status of players being poor but still PL-fit and without thinking just having that so called nous.Something we and Burnley have to painfully learn.

[MattGamble92]

Its a good point and its one I've raised, however, where we asking this after the Stoke match?

We won that 1-0 after absorbing a lot of pressure. It was not too disimiliar at all to Palace and Newcastle but the only difference was we come away with nothing.

[Dan]

well posted, this is the essence of many posters estimations.Even now this thought has been challenged. These

teams can pick up points, even when it seems against us they are no better on the day, its that tick of experience, on shape,

positioning, not falling off, in every single move and periods of every single game.

We hear about being game fit, but there is a status of players being poor but still PL-fit and without thinking just having that so called nous.Something we and Burnley have to painfully learn.

 

But it just isn't.

 

I'm sorry - the amount of years West Brom have been in this league and how experienced they are is not the reason we lost. We lost because of a fluke goal and failure to play to our own strengths (again). When you play into a teams hands by hoofing it long onto an aerially dominant centre half's head all game because you have no width and no intricate passing through the middle, then you're practically throwing it away.

 

People on here are over-rating our opposition. In our last five games I was impressed by two of those sides and even one of them is borderline - one was Swansea who I've rated for years (and I've seen them play far better than last week), the other was Palace who in all honesty weren't too dis-similar to West Brom, though they had a bit more about them.

 

Some of the tactics yesterday were non-league stuff. Bypassing our midfield (where we're supposedly stronger) and instead of trying to stretch a stubborn back line by bringing on a player with natural FLAIR like Mahrez, we throw on another big man and continue lumping it up to him in the hope they would just slip up and they just didn't.

 

We wouldn't have succeeded with yesterdays tactics in the Championship, is what I'm really getting at. West Brom are a very mediocre side who fluked a goal and just ate up our utterly ordinary attacking play. That is down to Leicester more than it is down to West Brom. It was yet another poor advert for the Premier League.

[Guest Col city fan]

But it just isn't.

I'm sorry - the amount of years West Brom have been in this league and how experienced they are is not the reason we lost. We lost because of a fluke goal and failure to play to our own strengths (again). When you play into a teams hands by hoofing it long onto an aerially dominant centre half's head all game because you have no width and no intricate passing through the middle, then you're practically throwing it away.

People on here are over-rating our opposition. In our last five games I was impressed by two of those sides and even one of them is borderline - one was Swansea who I've rated for years (and I've seen them play far better than last week), the other was Palace who in all honesty weren't too dis-similar to West Brom, though they had a bit more about them.

Some of the tactics yesterday were non-league stuff. Bypassing our midfield (where we're supposedly stronger) and instead of trying to stretch a stubborn back line by bringing on a player with natural FLAIR like Mahrez, we throw on another big man and continue lumping it up to him in the hope they would just slip up and they just didn't.

We wouldn't have succeeded with yesterdays tactics in the Championship, is what I'm really getting at. West Brom are a very mediocre side who fluked a goal and just ate up our utterly ordinary attacking play. That is down to Leicester more than it is down to West Brom. It was yet another poor advert for the Premier League.

I think you, like many, overlook the fact that we can only play our natural game (whatever that really is?) if the opponents allow us to.

This is really the point I'm trying to make. The opposition this season, unlike last season, won't let us play the simple 4-4-2, get the ball out wide thing. Why? Because they are better than last season. They are stronger, fitter, faster, have more ability.

Pearson knows this. He knows if we simply try to do a 4-4-2 we will be over-run in the midfield. He ain't stupid.

The problem we have is that we haven't signed enough quality players to really play a 4-4-2 well (as in, if we play it, we dominate games enough) or we haven't signed enough quality players to play any other bloody formation he's trying out.

The summer was a poor one IMO, for acquiring enough quality to be able to switch the formations around. And, I'm afraid, it could herald the end of Sir Nige if he doesn't pull the proverbial rabbit out of the bag, somehow.

[Aarongu]

Fully agree with OP.

 

Our game last season was built on a consistent lineup, style and system. Every player knew their job and carried it out to a high level. We didn't have so many standout players, it was all about the collective and how strong they were together.

 

The first 5 games this season, we played with that familiar style, although we did change system a couple of times, we still played our way.

 

Then we went to Palace and tried to be clever and it's been downhill since then. The key to us being a success in this division was sticking to our guns and going out to beat the opponent, our way.

 

If we try and match teams up, man for man, most teams will beat us because in key areas they have players with more quality. Saturday was a prime example, if we went with a standard 442 and played down the wings, we would have made their midfield stretch from the central positions they wanted to be in and that would have then created space in the middle for our CM's to play with. Instead, we matched them man for man and watched our full backs and midfielders struggle to create openings and lost to a goal that only tends to happen to teams who are in bad form.