Manchester City vs. Crystal Palace match thread

[sprites]

Tough watch, but did we really expect anything different against a highly motivated City team at their place?

Sarr is basically our single attacking threat, so take him out and no surprises we didn’t land a glove on em.

Agree with all the criticism towards Johnson - although to his credit he could and should’ve had at least one assist early on. Massively lacking confidence. Beautiful ball from Pino.

Lerma was right off it, agree. Hughes had a decent enough game, but again, needs an attacking player beside him. Seems to be two attacking players or two defensive players at the moment, which does hinder us imo.

Worried about JSL…feels like an $18M striker versus a $45M one atm.

 

[redshift]

- Glasner's starting eleven gave us no hope to even try to get something from that game. Hughes + Lerma in midfield sums it up with 0 progessive passing between the pair of them

I want to support this point. I know some consider them our 'defensive' pairing, at least amongst the pundits, but together they really do leave a lot to be desired. Individually I have no problem with either but together you have a grouping where the total is less than the sum of the parts for some weird reason. There has to be some other mix that would be better that OG is once again too stubborn to try.
Our midfield has to be job one for next year.

 

[Forest Hillbilly]

I have sympathy for any Palace fans who spent time and money travelling oop north to watch that. At this stage we knew that might happen , but some fans plan their away days a couple of months in advance.

Ahh well, at least it should be obvious where Palace's priorities are this season. s*** or bust for the final.

 

[park the bus]

An expected result. We are a poor side, time to face reality. Squeak through in Europe after a couple of decent performances, but the league? Extremely poor indeed, 15th or even 16th place finish a possibility. That's going backwards big time and a total failure to build on the success of last season.
One can but hope that whoever is the manager next season will have the ability to make a set of disparate players click and perform to a level lacking this season, otherwise it's going to be a long, hard, relegation battling season.

 

[Talvlad]

Its been a long season and the squad is fatigued. Even for those not playing there's been a lot of miles racked up with the associated disruption.

Last night was summed up for me when Sarr played a blind pass up the wing, only for it to trickle out of play as Munoz was still in his RB position!

We haven't done much team training - it's just been getting ready for games and as a result have not been able to integrate Brennan or JSL very much. I'm hoping they will work together next season!

 

[Stansferret]

An expected result. We are a poor side, time to face reality. Squeak through in Europe after a couple of decent performances, but the league? Extremely poor indeed, 15th or even 16th place finish a possibility. That's going backwards big time and a total failure to build on the success of last season.
One can but hope that whoever is the manager next season will have the ability to make a set of disparate players click and perform to a level lacking this season, otherwise it's going to be a long, hard, relegation battling season.

Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford and Fulham have all outperformed us. The points difference isn’t that huge. I think being the worst finishers in the PL has cost us dear.

 

[Teddy Eagle]

An expected result. We are a poor side, time to face reality. Squeak through in Europe after a couple of decent performances, but the league? Extremely poor indeed, 15th or even 16th place finish a possibility. That's going backwards big time and a total failure to build on the success of last season.
One can but hope that whoever is the manager next season will have the ability to make a set of disparate players click and perform to a level lacking this season, otherwise it's going to be a long, hard, relegation battling season.

This season's performance was always on the cards in the absence of creativity when Eze left us with a non-scoring midfield. Equally OG's system depended on Munoz keeping up his incredible standard which post-injury he's been struggling to do. Credit to Mitchell for trying to improve the attacking part of his game but it's still not natural to him and he doesn't offer the same threat Munoz did previously (not a criticism because if he was as good going forward as he is defensively he wouldn't be here).
Unfortunately we almost certainly need to sell Wharton to help finance a rebuild.

 

[Elwissthebest]

An expected result. We are a poor side, time to face reality. Squeak through in Europe after a couple of decent performances, but the league? Extremely poor indeed, 15th or even 16th place finish a possibility. That's going backwards big time and a total failure to build on the success of last season.
One can but hope that whoever is the manager next season will have the ability to make a set of disparate players click and perform to a level lacking this season, otherwise it's going to be a long, hard, relegation battling season.

Agree entirely. I suppose we'd have finished higher had we not had the sublime (as if) European distraction. Objectively, we are still behind Fulham and Brighton, Bournemouth and Brentford are well ahead of us.

 

[BromleyMonkey]

Just a bad day at the office

I think the manager and the players have the final on their minds imo, Next season under a new manager and a couple of new players things will be different 🤔

I’ve been using that as an excuse, but thinking about it, it didn’t look like that against Everton, we played quite well, created chances and dug in and fought back twice. I think City are just too good for us, they outclassed us without moving out of 2nd Gear

 

[BromleyMonkey]

One fine day Richards will actually head a corner under the bar, all his attempts this season, and the one tonight, soared over .....

That bloody Afro gets in the way🤣

 

[Lanzo-Ad]

I’ve been using that as an excuse, but thinking about it, it didn’t look like that against Everton, we played quite well, created chances and dug in and fought back twice. I think City are just too good for us, they outclassed us without moving out of 2nd Gear

I blame the manager 😊

 

[NEILLO]

I’ve been using that as an excuse, but thinking about it, it didn’t look like that against Everton, we played quite well, created chances and dug in and fought back twice. I think City are just too good for us, they outclassed us without moving out of 2nd Gear

We needed at least a point against Everton to be safe from relegation - hence the determined approach in that game.

Last night looked more like a form of training session and an injury avoidance exercise.

And against City you can only expect one outcome from that....

 

[silvertop]

We needed at least a point against Everton to be safe from relegation - hence the determined approach in that game.

Last night looked more like a form of training session and an injury avoidance exercise.

And against City you can only expect one outcome from that....

Quite.

The next 2 games may follow the same path.

 

[BromleyMonkey]

We needed at least a point against Everton to be safe from relegation - hence the determined approach in that game.

Last night looked more like a form of training session and an injury avoidance exercise.

And against City you can only expect one outcome from that....

I suppose it does depend on who we’re playing, Bournemouth we looked like we were on the beach even though we still needed something, but they’re a good team and that ‘on the beach’ excuse is easier than saying we were outclassed, because we managed to put in a performance against Newcastle and get three points

 

[MrRobbo]

I want to support this point. I know some consider them our 'defensive' pairing, at least amongst the pundits, but together they really do leave a lot to be desired. Individually I have no problem with either but together you have a grouping where the total is less than the sum of the parts for some weird reason. There has to be some other mix that would be better that OG is once again too stubborn to try.
Our midfield has to be job one for next year.

I like them both, but in this formation they are miles behind doing what Kamada and Wharton can do.

Both Hughes and Lerma can press and tackle, but neither are anywhere near technically good enough to do the transitional work our attack is built on. When you see these 2 starting you know that we are not playing to win.

Both are useful squad players, but there are couple of things to think about next season:

Regardless of formation, if Kamada goes, he needs to be replaced with a midfielder who can pass - this might be Hayden Hackney, would love Kees Smit

If we continue to play in the same way, we need a solution for when those 2 technical CMs dont play. Playing Lerma and Hughes and effectively throwing the game isn't a long term solution. Haters wont agree, but our bad run coincided with Kamada injury.

If we play a different formation, I feel more comfortable that Lerma/Hughes could be one of a 3. But ultimately they might just not be good enough for our aspirations.

 

[ripleyeagle]

Kamada is weak as piss but that was no dive, not worthy of a booking. To think that a fortnight ago these TW@TS saw fit to give an actual real penalty and not a booking for an actual real no contact dive. Refereeing is just total s***.

At the other end they'd have just pointed to the spot, VAR would've approved and the pillock Smith would've been banging on about "contact".

Cheating in your face in support of 116 times cheats.

Exactly the way I saw it too,Alan Smith just glossed over it, dismissed it out of hand without waiting to see the replay. At the pace Kamada was going that contact was enough to make him miss his footing. No doubt if that had happened to Foden at the other end VAR would have intervened and referred the ref to the monitor.

 

[ripleyeagle]

I thought it was a strange game in the fact I know we were poor but City only had about five chances and scored three.It wasn’t as if our goal was under constant siege, we had three really good chances to score but poor finishing as usual cost us.On another night we could have lost that game 2-1 which I think was a truer reflection of the game.

 

[Jameston88]

I thought it was a strange game in the fact I know we were poor but City only had about five chances and scored three.It wasn’t as if our goal was under constant siege, we had three really good chances to score but poor finishing as usual cost us.On another night we could have lost that game 2-1 which I think was a truer reflection of the game.

I can't believe most of the Palace players aren't between 50 to 100 grand a week and can barely string two passes together.
Richards and Johnson in particular were absolutely terrible.
I thought Warton at least tried to play some passes over the top to Strand-Larsen who was useless,can't even trap a ball.
48 million for him and 35 million for Johnson. I think we have been done up like a kipper with them two.

 

[Jameston88]

I can't believe most of the Palace players aren't between 50 to 100 grand a week and can barely string two passes together.
Richards and Johnson in particular were absolutely terrible.
I thought Warton at least tried to play some passes over the top to Strand-Larsen who was useless,can't even trap a ball.
48 million for him and 35 million for Johnson. I think we have been done up like a kipper with them two.

Should say earn,above.

 

[CrazyBadger]

I agree with the frustrations and understand where the concerns stem from however I do have a different stance, albeit I hold it with no belief that I am correct:

I do think all of Glasners eggs have been in the Conference League basket. Without that, he’d of been sacked long ago and this would have gone down as one of our poorest seasons for a while, assuming our performance was the same.

Our performance may have been better were it not the case that (according to my belief) beyond mere survival in the PL, the league and all other comps hadn’t have been dismissed by the manager.

It is my belief that PL survival was non-negotiable however the manager has solely prioritised European silverware.

A different manager next season may not take the same stance and we might look like a competitive league side once again.

Agree with this. felt like a game we didn't care about, protect players and start prepping players fitness for the Final.

I had thought that maybe, we'd have a go at winning this one.. firstly for confidence, but also as we seem to have an interest in Arsenal winning, due to the Eze clause....
Almost put a cheeky 20/1 bet on nicking it.. but held off til the team news came out. As soon as I saw Hughes and Lerma, I knew that wasn't gonna happen, so I relegated my bet to a 'hold on for a 0-0'!

Interested to find out how OG will play the arsenal game..may want to play a full strength team to prep them for the wednesday, but with the sh*thouse tactics arsenal have reverted to recently, the last thing we want is injuries.