The cost of beating City

[Bluedub]

Looking at the Liverpool game last night it struck me that they seem to have gone off the boil, they seem to lack the intensity in their play that they've displayed in the first half of the season.

In fact since they beat City they've failed to win any of their next three fixtures, drawing with Sunderland and Plymouth and last night's loss to Southampton.

It put me in mind of Spurs earlier in the season, they were flying, gave us a sound beating at their place and looked good to really push on however it didn't quite work out like that, they failed to win in their next 7 games in all competitions, amassing just 4 points from 12 in their next 4 league games.

Then we have Leicester, unlike Spurs and Liverpool they were on a bad run coming into their fixture with City, however like Spurs and Liverpool pulled out their tripe to gain maximum points against City and then followed that up with just 1 point from their next three league games.

Chelsea of course bucked that trend but there's a lesson here for our competitors, take 3 points off City at your peril.

 

[Skoorb]

Interesting stuff. Leicester by far the most anomalous - utterly woeful before they played us when they were back to the side that won the league.......and then they have slipped back into being pints again.

Everybody's new bar - work your socks off to beat City, the rest are easy so you can relax.....

We have yet to develop/create and aura that puts teams on the back foot before they step out of the player's tunnel onto the pitch. Part of this I believe is our general inability to establish a grip of the game early by scoring quickly - that changes the whole dynamic of a game. So often we seem content to just retain the ball and fail to match or exceed the urgency with which opponents so often start games. How many times have we fallen behind to the first goal really early in matches this season? The opposition go out with a game plan - keep it tight, press high and hard, stop City from getting chances and if we get a lead, consolidate behind the halfway line (& perhaps start committing game stopping fouls high up the pitch to prevent City regaining any rhythm).

Getting the first goal was always a significant element of rag success - they would often times score first and teams came to know that if that happened they would struggle to recover. We have specialised in handing the advantage to our opponents too often ("let's give them a goal head start and see if we can catch up") and until we can reversed this tendency I think we will struggle to develop the same mental advantage.

 

[Buzz Lightyear]

I think we forget that we have moved up to being one of the Elite Clubs in the league, but arrogant as that sounds, it is in fact true.

We have become one of the Clubs treat it as a FA Cup match minnows and against Giants they play out of their skins but they use so much energy that it takes time to recover and playing the team next to you in the league dos not have the same motivation.

We have to be up for every game, because we have been in the minnow situation when we have played well beyond our normal play just because it was Arsenal or Liverpool, Now we are there to be conquered and it is up to the team to realise there are no easy games in this League.

Pep now knows he has a fight but not only against teams but an unknown force dedicated to smearing this Clubs name for their own ends, because every time City make that top four place someone doesn't and it costs them money.