Deja Poo
It's really, really hard to see the logic in the way Poch set us up today. What's troubling is how many times we say this about games against City, or big games in general. The way way we initially set up and played, was so fucking naive it's hard to comprehend. Like Poch has never seen them, let alone been mullered by them several times the same way.
City are the one team who you absolutely know how they are going to play. They play 433 and look to move you around in midfield, pull players out of position and manipulate you into creating wide overloads. Without the ball they squeeze the shit out of you, try to hem you in and force you to turn over possession, again meaning they can overload.
If the plan with the 4231 was to actually try and take the game to City then it failed miserably. We needed to play much higher, be tactically cohesive and aggressive, press like ferocious cunts ourselves. Instead we sat back, Winks and Ndombele got horribly outnumbered by City's 3 in midfield easily, DeBruyne and Gundogan continually finding space between lines, Eriksen and Sissoko repeatedly lost runners in wide areas, KWP particularly (but also Rose) was horribly exposed - even Neville picked out Sissoko as needing to cover and track more in his commentary.
Playing a CM2 against City's CM3 is never a great idea, even if we had two Kante's in there, but we didn't even have one. It was really naive stuff. I also don't get why he didn't put Lamela on one of the wide positions, where his willingness to track and tackle might have been more use and have Eriksen through the centre, where his brain and composure on the counter might have been more viable.
If the plan on the other hand was to contain and counter, that was equally inept, we certainly didn't contain and we didn't counter once effectively. Had three fucking shots in 96 minutes. And one of them was a header from one of our two corners. I've seen bottom half clubs make a better fist of bus parking and countering there.
I don't even think this City were at their scintillating best, they didn't have to be. We were lucky to still be in it by the time we equalised, but the goal and Poch adjusting to a kind of 4141 - at least without the ball - saw us improve bit, and we did actually get some kind of faint foothold in the game for the last 20 minutes of that first half, passes were actually made between our own players, and that half actually finished up with us having 48% of the ball (although we did also inconveniently concede another gaol during this phase).
If the first half was a bit of a shit sandwich, the second half we didn't even get the bread. It was just insipid shit. Made much worse by the bizarre substitution of Winks. Lets be clear, Winks wasn't great, but nobody was, but he was shitting the bed less than most others, receiving the ball more than others. I'm Ok with putting Moura's quick legs for the counter into that game, I just don't understand the logic of taking Winks out of it - if it was tactical (if it wasn't, and it's because he's trying to get him through games then fair do's). but If tactical, the decision to take him out and keep Sissoko on, and worse, move him back to Wink's midfield position was fucking whack.
In his 55 minutes, Winks completed 44/48 passes. Received the ball 46 times. Fwd 17/Back 19/Sq 8.
In 95 minutes Sissoko completed 26/32. Received 25. Fwd 7 (yes fucking 7)/Back 16/ Sq 3. In the 40 minutes he played in Winks's place, he made 10 fucking passes. We went from having 48% of the ball to having 36% from the time Winks went off. (For completeness, Ndombele 39/45. Rcvd 40. Fwd 18/Back 13/Sq 8)
Was there a defensive payoff to this tactical switch maybe? No, Sissoko made zero tackles, zero interceptions in the whole game, repeatedly failed to track runners - there were numerous examples of this throughout he game (as previously mentioned, highlighted by Neville) but a typical one was when KWP ended ups getting striped by Stirling.
I'm not saying Sissoko was the only candidate for being hooked, Poch could have yanked any of the front four off, Lamela continually killed just about every break we had, Eriksen was as inept as Sissoko. Hell even Ndombele was no more effective than Winks in the grand scheme of things.
I just did not understand this sub at all. From that point on we degenerated into Burnley with less football and but for the beautifulness of VAR would have got exactly what we/Poch deserved.
This was a skanking.
Individual
Lloris - Distribution was fucking awful. Couple of decent saves.
KWP - Tough learning curve today. Got very little protection at times, but also looked like a kid playing his first ever consecutive PL game at times.
Alderweireld - Pretty poor for the second goal, letting Aguero get across him.
Sanchez - One of the few to come out with any credit, worked off his feet.
Rose - Like KWP got badly exposed at times.
Ndombele - Looked like a turtle in a windsock at times - but the CM2 without a proper 6 in there was always going to be a tough ask.
Winks - Same as Ndombele, but was at least seeing more ball and receiving nearly twice as much as other midfielders, just did not get the logic of taking him of all people out of that game.
Sissoko - Fucking terrible, again.
Lamela - Took his goal well, and slung in a mean corner for the 2nd, but fucked away just about every other opportunity we had to counter with poor choices and execution and managed to complete 15 passes in 84 minutes. It's not enough.
Eriksen - Really poor.
Kane - No service but not great either.
Moura - Great header, touched the ball 10 more times after that in 40 minutes, 5 of them successfully. Yay.
