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| |  Posted 31/12/2007 13:41:09 | |
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Used to be SB, you know
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| | You always see complaints about parking the bus and playing negatively when one of the 'big four' is thwarted by a team, as though it's not their responsibility to find a way through and hit the target. HH, what you have to remember is that while (1) we were at home (2) we spent £40m over the summer and (3) we are 5th in the league, we are not yet in a position to go all-out against the established sides. £40m may be a lot of money, but it's still peanuts compared to the cost of the top teams, and so containment is the first priority against a team with such expensive attacking flair. While it is undoubtedly a compliment to you that we played that way, you can't say that you think it isn't a valid tactical plan, or that it was a surprise? That doesn't mean we were playing for a draw, only that we look to nullify your threat first off and build our own chances from there. That's the way most teams play, and there are those that use the same tactics against us. Sometimes it will come off (as in the derby game), other times we'll end up losing (as could have happened yesterday), and other times we'll end up with a very decent point against teams that are expected to beat us. As others have pointed out, we have more than one style of play and the tactics are tailored to each game on its own merits, and it has been shown time and time again that this is the best way to play against the 'big four' teams (we tried to take Chelsea on and look what happened there!). 'Parking the bus' is really just another way of saying resolute defending when the other team is on top, and all the top teams will have spells in every game where that is the case. It's the cornerstone of any good performance, but was really only the case for us in the last 20 minutes or so. Don't be fooled by the stats on the number of shots, either. We are not a team that tends to have large numbers of shots in a game. We generally build up patiently and sometimes try to create an easier chance when other teams might take a speculative shot. Sometimes that can be a bit frustrating for us City fans, but also means that our ratio of goals to shots is amongst the highest in the league. A low number of shots doesn't mean we had no attacking play whatsoever, and in the first half I felt we matched you. On another day that could have resulted in a goal and all three points.
Keeper of the heretic's fork of doom. |
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| | | Posted 31/12/2007 13:50:12 | |
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Premiership Poster
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| | Spot on LM, although I stand but what I said about our lack of ball possession and poor passing in the second half, we made life difficult for ourselves. As for money spent, HH ought to realise that in Torres alone they had £26m on the pitch, the market value of 2 or 3 of their players could near as damn it buy our squad. /money doesn't necessarily buy success, and £40m spent in the summer doesn't mean that we now can automatically go out and compete on a level playing field with the so called big four, it'll take time, therefore yesterdays result on the whole was a good one for us.
Si thi tha nos |
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| | | Posted 31/12/2007 13:54:39 | |
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Used to be SB, you know
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| ESM (31/12/2007)
Spot on LM, although I stand but what I said about our lack of ball possession and poor passing in the second half, we made life difficult for ourselves.As for money spent, HH ought to realise that in Torres alone they had £26m on the pitch, the market value of 2 or 3 of their players could near as damn it buy our squad. /money doesn't necessarily buy success, and £40m spent in the summer doesn't mean that we now can automatically go out and compete on a level playing field with the so called big four, it'll take time, therefore yesterdays result on the whole was a good one for us. I agree about that, and it certainly contributed to the spell at the end where we did have to park the bus. If we'd played the way we did in the first half, we might not have had to do that at all and would have had more opportunity to create decent chances to take all three points.
Keeper of the heretic's fork of doom. |
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| | | Posted 31/12/2007 14:00:02 | |
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| Labmonkey (31/12/2007)
ESM (31/12/2007)
Spot on LM, although I stand but what I said about our lack of ball possession and poor passing in the second half, we made life difficult for ourselves.As for money spent, HH ought to realise that in Torres alone they had £26m on the pitch, the market value of 2 or 3 of their players could near as damn it buy our squad. /money doesn't necessarily buy success, and £40m spent in the summer doesn't mean that we now can automatically go out and compete on a level playing field with the so called big four, it'll take time, therefore yesterdays result on the whole was a good one for us. I agree about that, and it certainly contributed to the spell at the end where we did have to park the bus. If we'd played the way we did in the first half, we might not have had to do that at all and would have had more opportunity to create decent chances to take all three points. IMO, it all went a bit tits up when Sven subbed Vassell. It meant that other than Petrov we had no pace to break out, so we dropped deep and invited them onto us. Twas a VERY long 20 minutes or so.
Si thi tha nos |
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| | | Posted 31/12/2007 14:05:52 | |
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Third Division Poster
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| | Spot on there Labmonkey, agree with every word you said. Go on over to the Liverpool forums that HH came from, it's hilarious reading their post match thread. So many of them act like it is their divine right to win the Premiership and dropping points against us is some massive dishonour. I don't think many of them realise they're only 1 place above us in the table for a reason. All the accusations about 'parking the bus' piss me off no end, it's their fault if they can't find a goal between all of their players. As I said before, I felt the first half was an open and entertaining game which could have gone either way. They shot from all over the park, we just passed it round waiting for the perfect opportunity so while the stats favoured them it seemed the game was fairly balanced until the last 20 minutes.
"Sven, Sven, wherever you may be, you are the King of Man City, you can have my wife on our settee if you win us a cup at Wem-ber-ley!" |
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| | | Posted 31/12/2007 18:05:46 | |
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Second Division Poster
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| just been on their forum makes great reading lol they r really pissed off bloody great it is
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| | | Posted 31/12/2007 19:15:55 | |
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Premiership Poster
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| Our back 4 cost less than £4m
you do not mess with Jack Reacher |
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| | | Posted 31/12/2007 19:21:44 | |
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Premiership Poster
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| Bert Trautmanns neck brace (31/12/2007)
Our back 4 cost less than £4m
You can go as far as back 5 I think Bert. What was Dunney - £2.5 million? Ball was a freebie, Richards and Onuoha were Academy products and Hart was £650,000.
Torres and Kuyt - thirty odd millions worth? Too bad lads.
________________________________Predicting false dawns since August '07.
 
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