Norwich then

Waiting for my lift to narridge,it's a crappy old drive,takes forever
Need a performance today to get back on track and Norwich are the ideal side as they don't press & cause problems like saints or palace did so should be a comfortable 3 points
Hopefully

Would go with

Hart
Zabaleta Kompany Lescott Kolorov
Milner yaya Silva
Navas Dzeko Jovetic

Hart
Zaba Vinny Lezza Clichy
Navas Milner Yaya Silva
Jovetic *Negredo

*I know Dawg said he's being rested, but Dzeko has an ankle injury and played 90 mins on Monday....Negredo has had 5 days to get fully fit after 55 mins.
Otherwise...Dzeko for Negredo.

I'll go along with either of those teams.

Need a big game today, no time to lick wounds from Monday. A full on battery like Spuds and it's forgotten.

Was in Norwich/Ipswich all week, it's like driving to the moon. They don't understand the concept of motorways over that way.

CITY: Hart, Zabaleta, Kompany (c), Demichelis, Clichy, Navas, Milner, Toure, Silva, Jovetic, Negredo

Would prefer Lescott but good enough

Yeah, would have preferred Lezza, but still, that should be a good enough team....COME ON THE BEAST!!

Good team except for DM.

Get Sammy on and I'm sure we'll score.

Pretty poor first half....little movement up front.

Navas has been really wasteful whenever he's been in the box.

Jovetic in spells, has looked OK....but still think in the early days, he's not suited to Negredo....as he drops too deep, but not wide. The amount of times we've had the ball in the final third....but the 2 strikers are stationary...no-one wants to move wide, especially on the left.

DeM....looks nervous......really not sure if Monday has done him in, nerves wise.

Maybe MP may add Lopes/Rodwell and bring off Navas, push Milner wide right/left.....get Yaya further forward, as he's just sat too deep.

Anyway...a win is a must..Chelsea 2 up....no point in waiting until 75 mins to try and score....but Norwich will be happy with their bank of 8 defenders.....so will no doubt deploy the same tactics.....

How much has Monday night hurt us? We'll see in the 2nd half.

Topdawg wrote:Get Sammy on and I'm sure we'll score.

????

http://www.coolsport.tv/stream28.html

stream if you want one.

Sammy Nasri

Topdawg wrote:Sammy Nasri

You on the lash already Dawg?   

Gave up on my streams doing my suede in, putting up with sky muppets.

We look shit scared though, Monday still very much on their minds. Big 2nd Half this.

Is it as poor as the stats show? We've had 66% possession and only four shots?

Need to do something here !

Can see a Sunderland type fuck up happening at this rate

Ray Houghton reckons Norwich can nick this with another striker on.

Kolarov on for Nedge. So we're on Dzeko as a lone striker, brilliant...

No fucking idea sometimes.

How many has he missed? Christ, it's like having Samaras...

We are simply lost without Sergio, hate to say it but the wheels are seriously off at the moment.

Come scab one in lads

We've been shit. Navas can't cross for toffee and Yaya is playing CB.

This all bodes well for the visit of our new bogey team on Wednesday.

Too many players have done fuck all again.

Oh, bloody hell Yaya.

What a fucking waste of 2 hours that was. Utter bollocks. I don't want to hear Pellegrini's excuses this time.

We had 60%+ possession and created lots of chances bullshit.

i knew we were gonna struggle. The Chelsea game knocked the stuffing out of us.
Confidence down and we are desperately missing Segio, Nasri and Fernando

Something needs to change or we are gonna screw up our season

We had almost 20 shots and missed nearly all of them. Woeful. And after Liverpool did us a favour too.

Jesus, so angry this is proper shit. Season in serious jeopardy. Let's hope it's our little wobble but got to get it going soon. Nothing against the bogey mid week and who knows?

Yet again the engineer not up to the job. It easy when we are scoring 6 but he hasn't a clue when it's like today.

We are missing fernandinho so much.

Well, well, well......that was so Mancini-esque by MP....fucking awful management.

He keeps the worse player on the field on...in Navas.

Navas was nothing short of a £1m player today.....never saw one cross, one pass, one bit of inter-play that actually resulted with the ball at the feet of a City player.....he also took about 8 corners, all of which were awful. Even Ray Houghton on commentary said "why is he still on the pitch?"

Yaya Toure? What was the point of him being involved today?

He was obviously told to stay deep by MP....and involved himself in FA of the game!

I said before the game, "how much will Monday have affected the players and MP?"

Well today, was proof that Monday was more than a 1-0 defeat....MP has been 'shaken' by that result and performance and it showed today.

Awful management.

He could have made 3, maybe 4 changes in the way we set up the team.....he made one. A striker off for Kolorov.

Sorry..........but that is poor management....against a team like Norwich.

I'm still behind MP before anyone starts bemoaning my post....but IF i can see what needed changing, and all the commentators were saying exactly the same thing....why does he sit on his hands and bother with Yaya..fucking Toure playing as an additional CB????

Woeful.

meltonblue wrote:We are missing fernandinho so much.

Don't buy that for one minute Melton. If we have to rely on Fernandinho to be in the team, to beat Norwich....then we are fucked for the next 3 weeks.

Yaya was told by MP to sit deep...all game???? Was that necessary? Terrible management.

We are turning into a team that needs an early goal. Get one and we score 5, we don't and we really struggle. To me that is mental rather than form. But it's something for the manager to fix and he is incapable it seems of changing games?

without going in with knee jerk reactions why do we not get players in the box surely to god at corners why don't we have someone on the front post as we cant get it past the 1st man. Ray Houghton was on about corners & sending the big guys forward saying we have at least 5 yet we cant hit 1. I'm going to bet soooooooo disappointed, Like Cardiff all over again.

blisteringblue wrote:We are turning into a team that needs an early goal.  Get one and we score 5, we don't and we really struggle.  To me that is mental rather than form.  But it's something for the manager to fix and he is incapable it seems of changing games?

Problem was....Navas got in so many positions today, when a simple drag back into the area, would have put Silva and Yaya in...at least 3 or 4 times...but he was more interested in looking at the grass.

He should never have been on the pitch after 60 mins, never mind taking corners...his worst performance by a country mile today...yet MP sits there.....and obviously thinks he's doing well!!! WTF?

The biggest thing for me was Yaya.....never, all this season, or any other season...have I seen him play as an additional CB.......
This only shows that Pellegrini fucked up big style today....let the Chelsea result effect him, and played a system that was suited to a Chelsea....and abandoned everything we've worked towards, solely because of Monday.

Pellegrini - 0
Jose -10

It worked, he fell for it and has exposed a massive weakness.........reacted to Jose in the press conference, now played a formation after Monday.........MP, you've been Mourinho'd...you cock!

Stick to what you've done since July...fuck the others, fuck Yaya at times and drop him....or at least, play him where it matters....but don't, please don't....SIT ON YOUR FUCKING HANDS....like Mancini did.

MP has exposed a chink in our armour now through this.....so he better wise up, get tough, and sort his shit out.

MP's comments:

We are frustrated because we could not win, but we did all we could do but in front of us there was a team who defended very well.

"Our strikers Sergio Aguero, Alvaro Negredo and Edin Dzeko are not 100% fit so that's very important for the team. Every team will drop points, but we are still two points behind the leaders and we have 39 points to play for so we will continue the exactly the same."

So...i take it Rodwell & Lopes must be injured??? Include Micah in that!

Forget the excuses.....you got it all wrong today.....let's move on...we are only a few points off the top, a little pressure off from the press...but Liverpool are 4 points off us.

Chelsea have easier games ahead than us.....by March...we could be 6 points off the top......massive chance missed through the lack of acquisitions in Jan ......and who's fault is that?

MP. no excuses...we were shit all over the park....and did nothing about it.

Onwards....with all of our home games to come.....but Negredo needs to get himself back to fitness and form......and we need to change things around.

"Don't buy that for one minute Melton. If we have to rely on Fernandinho to be in the team, to beat Norwich....then we are fucked for the next 3 weeks."

I agree and I think we are to be honest, unless Pellegrini changes his system. I'm not saying one player makes the difference in general blueboy, just in Pellegrinis system and if he doesn't change it then yes we are fucked. I'm not 100% convinced he will change, that's my issue.

meltonblue wrote:"Don't buy that for one minute Melton. If we have to rely on Fernandinho to be in the team, to beat Norwich....then we are fucked for the next 3 weeks."

I agree and I think we are to be honest, unless Pellegrini changes his system. I'm not saying one player makes the difference in general blueboy, just in Pellegrinis system and if he doesn't change it then yes we are fucked. I'm not 100% convinced he will change, that's my issue.

Melton...I totally get what you are saying with Fernadinho, but really, do we have to play a system that makes Yaya play as a CB, because he's not fit? I mean, come on MP.....that's a laughing stock.

MP made the right choice in Milner............but on at least 10 occasions during the game, Yaya was behind DeM, Kompany, Zab and Clichy...picking up a ball from DeM!!!....Why?????

He could only have been told to do that by MP. But what did he do? Nothing, no change to the system....how many times this season has he made a radical change that we thought WTF?...but it's ultimately pushed Yaya further forward...and resulted in a goal?

Today...it was if he was clueless to what needed to be done. Shell-shocked by Mourinho.

We've been great this season, but only great because we've been brave and dynamic.....today, we were neither...we actually looked like a team that was happy for a point...and THAT...is simply, not good enough.

I completely agree mate, I was criticising Pellegrini too. He had to change the system based on the players available seeing as we didn't buy people who could play those roles as back up in January and that is two games where he hasn't.

meltonblue wrote:I completely agree mate, I was criticising Pellegrini too. He had to change the system based on the players available seeing as we didn't buy people who could play those roles as back up in January and that is two games where he hasn't.

I just don't buy this..."players not fully fit" crap.

He knew what the player injury list was and what we had coming up......and if he decides not to buy players, that's his fault.

If he honestly can't change a style or system due to injuries.....that concerns me more...but if chose not to change the system......when players were available to do it, and early on in the match....then that's something we all should be asking why?

It's just like last season all over again....a few injuries and we can't seem to be able to change a system, change a team, sub players who are shit during a game.

If he honestly thinks that Navas deserved 90 mins on the pitch today...after watching him for 60 mins......they I give up....and there were subs that could have changed that:

Rodwell for Navas - make Rodwell sit and push Yaya forward. Milner wide right.

Milner wide, Navas off and Lopes on.....and keep Yaya where he was.

Plenty of options...

"He knew what the player injury list was and what we had coming up......and if he decides not to buy players, that's his fault.

If he honestly can't change a style or system due to injuries.....that concerns me more...but if chose not to change the system......when players were available to do it, and early on in the match....then that's something we all should be asking why?"

Exactly, that's what I'm saying.

Today was as bad as large parts of last season.
Today, for the first time, I think it looks as if it's all going to get messy.
The next game is the acid test for me. We have failed against two completely different styles of play this week, and if we don't win the next game this little wobble turns into a crisis.
MP really needs to show his ability, the tricky part of the season is now upon us. No more excuses, we can't afford any more slip ups.
I still have faith and I believe we will turn this round. It's not over yet, but it may soon be.

Yes it was a crappy game - that we should have won - but at least he shifted the pony tailed one from midfield and put Milner in - but then he put Kolarov for Negredo - Mancini usually pulled stunts like that.

from watching it live, Ray Houghton nearly spunked his panties every time Norwich had the ball in our half