KentVillan

Also VAR should be getting involved in direct FKs around the box. Some shocking ones get awarded or overlooked which are (or would be) very good goalscoring opportunities. At least review it if a goal is scored direct from the FK? Just think the rules and the implementation are bonkers, even though I really like having accurate offside calls now. One thing they could do is have extra people on the VAR team so they can all look at the different possible infractions at the same time. Would speed up the game loads. But PL are tight. Always have been.

Yep, and what’s peculiar is that VAR completely ignore the on-field decision for offside and do it to the millimeter. Yet for any kind of penalty / red card review, an enormous amount of leeway goes to the ref’s original call. Now I get that where the ref has *seen* everything correctly and made a judgment call (eg he feels attacker was playing for the pen, or he feels the tackle is borderline red / yellow). But often I think VAR is reviewing things the ref hasn’t been able to see properly, and they should just completely disregard the onfield decision and start from scratch.

That was my point. The big grey areas give refs and VAR too much scope to be inconsistent, whether deliberate or not.

Is it possible that something in our training programme / squad management is making players more vulnerable to this kind of injury? Or is it just pure bad luck? I personally think Kamara will be a big miss. Yes we can clearly still win games without him, and have in the past, but so many of the partnerships in the side are being disrupted at the moment. It’s one thing having him out when we have all our defenders fully fit, it’s another when the DM has to cover a second string back line. I’d like to hope Iroegbunam is ready, but more likely Dougie is going to drop back or Dendoncker starts*. Either way that feels like a big downgrade in what we can do with the ball (in Dougie’s case because we lose him further up the pitch). * This is impossible as he is out on loan, so superb analysis from me here.

I think the problem with the officiating currently is they’re trying to get the game to flow a bit more and for the referee’s decision to be upheld as often as possible by VAR if it’s a “grey area”. Subconsciously (or maybe consciously, who knows) this gives refs and VAR too much licence to favour one team, by erring slightly on the side of leniency for one side, and / or the side of enforcement for the other side. My sense is the refs and VAR officials aren’t corrupt, they’re just cowards. For example, if the same standards of dissent were applied to Bruno Fernandes as your average PL squad player, he’d be sent off in every match. You similar double standards with cynical fouls, tussling on FKs / corners, and even offsides where I swear they regularly pick the wrong frame for when the ball was played. It feels like Premier League refs are actually quite thick a lot of the time. Always apparent when you hear them being interviewed after they retire. And the way they boast about how they handle the big characters on the pitch is completely delusional … they’re starstruck and get worked by the big name pros into constantly making little mistakes that add up.

I like watching City actually, just not what they do in the final third. But the way they build it up through defence and midfield is pretty special. But their attacking play is only really good to watch against a really top, top Champions League side who are pinning them back a bit and making them take risks. Against lower / mid table sides they just play so conservatively and wait for the game to be handed to them really.

I thought Man Utd were very poor against us and lucky to get the win - they’ll continue to drop points. Newcastle also look poor to me atm, lucky to beat Forest, blatant pen ignored by ref and VAR. The main threat is Spurs.

I think he lacks that something special, but he’s pretty good at everything. Pau (passing), Mings (aerial dominance), and Konsa (pace and calmness) all bring something unique on top of the basics. Lenglet for me is a perfectly decent player who is just missing that extreme pace or strength or dominance to make him a really top player. For that reason he’s always going to be squad material. No issues with him really, but we need the better CBs back asap if we want to finish top 4.

This is a completely fair take, but the idea he’s at fault for our loss today, or a major weak link in the squad (I know you’re not making these points, but others are)… is ludicrous. I’d love us to sign another right back to push him, but I really don’t think we need to sell him. He has a great attitude and is a much better player than he gets credit for on here.

But he is a scapegoat, and it’s **** boring and juvenile when people turn words into an opportunity to attention seek

Fair enough, but he wasn’t shit today

Not really, no. He’s had a bad season, but today’s performance was fine. People latching on to him today because of the recent narrative about him, and because of Utd’s winner, but watch the game back and you’ll see a lot of very good work by Cash today.

Thought Cash was one of our best players today. The “mistake” for their winner was just a taller, stronger player getting their head on a great cross. I don’t think a different RB would have stopped that goal.

Thought it was hilarious, and at the time it was an equaliser. Couldn’t give a **** what Utd fans think about literally anything

Correct take. Unai can walk away with his head held high. Tactics and team selection were fine. Issue was poor execution from individuals at key moments. Ref was also very inconsistent, mostly in Utd’s favour. Don’t want to blame him, but it gave them a slight edge. They know they got lucky today. Reassuring for me in some ways, in that recent losses have just been terrible performances. This one felt more like one you can take a bit of confidence from, going into the Fulham game.

Cash has been excellent today

Clear penalty

https://amp.marca.com/en/football/manchester-city/2023/06/16/648c64e5e2704e6a9f8b460a.html That’s his own teammate saying “he always takes advantage when he has days off”. And then a more direct answer to your question. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-10487383/amp/Manchester-City-England-star-Jack-Grealish-turned-away-bar-drunk.html This was in Feb 2022, not celebrating anything in particular afaik. He was dropped for this I believe, or possibly it was a previous incident. I mean come on, use your eyes and your common sense. The stuff that gets reported in the media is when there’s photo / video evidence that makes it online. To call all of this guesswork is delusional

It’s more that to stay in the top flight into your late 30s you need to be extremely serious about looking after yourself, to an extent that would seem unhinged to your average punter. There’s no sign at all that Grealish lives that kind of life. Nowadays even one night a week on the beers is disrupting your training / recovery enough to put you at a disadvantage. The fact Grealish was caught on a heavy bender mid-season (a few days before a match) to the point he wasn’t even allowed into a venue, and was then dropped for a game … in his late 20s … doesn’t point to an elite level of professionalism. I’m not saying at all that his career is just going to nosedive, but I think he is going to find it increasingly difficult when he turns 30, and will either have to make some lifestyle changes or lower his ambitions. More of a Rooney decline than a Gazza decline, if that makes sense.

Those deals will also dry up if he stops getting minutes for City and England.

Maybe not, but it’s pretty obvious he drinks more than your average top flight pro.

I know through an ex Villa player that he likes a very regular drink throughout the season, and parties fairly hard in the off season. Not saying he’s the wild man sometimes portrayed. I don’t think the Gazza, Merson, etc comparisons are at all appropriate. But to retire in your late 30s, you usually need to take extreme care of your diet and nutrition, and he definitely isn’t living like that. That’s part of the charm, though, and he’ll still be a decent player into his early 30s I’d imagine, unless he picks up a bad injury. A few on here engaging in spiteful wishful thinking.

And you can view this as “punishing the press”. ie when we have Konsa and Pau in the side, high pressing us is a huge risk, because that’s what they want the oppo to do. It just creates more space for us to progress the ball. But with our current lineup, the oppo get much more return on that high press, with a lot less risk. Suddenly the dynamic of our games against the better sides is we look panicky and under pressure for 90 mins. That wasn’t happening before, even though the tactics were largely the same. It’s a personnel issue in my view. Although maybe Emery could experiment with playing tighter and deeper for a few games while we wait for key players to return. As the Shef Utd game showed, against weaker oppo, the tactics still work well. I think it’s more in these Man Utd / Newcastle / Chelsea type games where the personnel change has turned winnable games into big challenges.

Pau isn't just a progressive passer, he's incredibly press resistant. He's the CB most comfortable with being pressed, turning out of trouble, and then springing an attack. It's no coincidence IMO that losing him has made teams more confident pressing us. I feel like you're equating press resistance with being defensively solid and hard working. For me it's the ability to keep the ball under pressure without panicking, and play good progressive passes. That's what scares teams into *not* pressing. When you lose that passing quality at the back, the risk/reward of swarming the defence changes completely. Earlier in the season / last season, teams that tried to press us were getting punished, because Unai was really the master of humiliating the press. I think he's lost some of the players (Torres, Buendia, and now Konsa) who really helped him achieve that, and the central midfielders, who are also instrumental in this tactic, all look knackered atm. One mistake I do think Unai makes at times is not rotating key players off early when a game is clearly dead (in either direction). That may be something he needs to consider. We're all haunted by the MON season where we just ran out of gas. I don't think Unai is that type of manager, but he may be overworking certain players atm.

We were comfortably beating those kinds of teams not that long ago, and the main concern we had was that Unai's Villa couldn't break down a low block. Now it's that Unai's Villa can't deal with an aggressive press. Losing 4 first-choice defenders to injury + not having squad depth to keep Kamara/Luiz/McGinn fresh may be a bigger issue than Unai's tactics?