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Football: Four Amigos


AncalagonTheBlack

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11 minutes ago, JordanJH1993 said:

This recent obsession with Guardiola’s spending is both petulant and hypocritical.

In fairness he might be being petulant but he's not entirely wrong. United started off with a worse squad with City and, while they might have spent a lot of money, City have spent more. They also seem to be spending their money more effectively which doesn't help.

If it's all a ploy to put pressure on the United hierarchy to give him the money he needs to close the gap on City for next season, and he's got a good plan for how to do that, then fair enough. The problem is the kind of environments Mourinho likes to set up seem to have a limited shelf life before things unravel and it'd have to be a concern this drop off in form with City disappearing over the horizon is a sign of that happening.

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Justice was done with Ederson's save from the penalty. Sterling did foul Zaha but it was comfortably outside the box.

As for Mkhi's form - this is not too much worse than his second season at Dortmund. Actually his spell at United has followed a pretty similar pattern: solid but unspectacular first season, poor second, now just the exceptional third to go if he stays that long.

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I think Txiki Begiristain is a major reason why City have spent their money better than United. There was a clear direction on the type of football the club was expected to play and players were signed accordingly all in preparation for Guardiola eventually joining. United, otoh, gave full control to the managers and as a result our squad is a mishmash of three managers.

I think a director of football at United might be necessary now - it's unlikely that we get a long term manager like Fergie in the foreseeable future so having a DoF could ensure consistency in signing players (and managers) to fit the style of football that the club is expected to play. Another mistake we made was appointing three defensive managers post Fergie and then wonder why we aren't playing attacking football.

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3 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

In fairness he might be being petulant but he's not entirely wrong. United started off with a worse squad with City and, while they might have spent a lot of money, City have spent more. They also seem to be spending their money more effectively which doesn't help.

If it's all a ploy to put pressure on the United hierarchy to give him the money he needs to close the gap on City for next season, and he's got a good plan for how to do that, then fair enough. The problem is the kind of environments Mourinho likes to set up seem to have a limited shelf life before things unravel and it'd have to be a concern this drop off in form with City disappearing over the horizon is a sign of that happening.

He’s not wrong, but with the recent surge in prices, what’s the average price for a really good player nowadays? Somewhere between 40m and 50m? Man City aren’t really going above that range. It’s teams like Man United, Barcelona, PSG - even Liverpool - that are hitting way above that. Man City have a lot of players that cost around 50m, but so far, it’s hard to say they’ve really overspent on any of those players.

Spending big is fine when you do it right and the players are a success. Mourinho’s problem is that Man City have spent more than Man United but they have spent it well, when Man United are hitting with some and missing with others.

 

With Gabriel Jesus having what looks like a serious injury, maybe Man City will go back in for Alexis Sanchez in January. Arsenal should take what they can get for him. I don’t even think their fans would be angry like they were when Arsenal used to sell their best players to the rivals, as in this case, he’d be going for free in the summer anyway and Man City are so far ahead of Arsenal without having Alexis, so he’s hardly going to be the difference between the two teams at the end of the season.

 

 

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Just as it looked like we succumbed to a late sucker punch, we bounce back.  Gomez is a great player but badly needs to learn how to stay alert at the back post. 

Of course the real result today is that fans and players were soundly beaten by terrible scheduling.  A real shortage of quality around the league today, to the surprise of absolutely no-one.  

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