Bannan just got a ball in good position but bizarrely pulled to a stop. That was a case where he should've tried something. Friedel with another good save.
depends on which side you take in the argument... Coming from some, "OK" could very well mean a "world class performance"
In retrospect, yes. Bradley should have man marked him. It would also have helped if: 1. The original cross was prevented. 2. Two Villa defenders didn't chase 1 City attacker and then 3. Weakly clear the ball directly to Silva. 4. Silva wasn't Silva. Bradely looked slow leading up to that. I guess his Dad isn't the only one who leaves players on the pitch too long.
Pretty good first half, sloppy 2nd half. The DM role he was playing was not ideal for him. Petrov is a holding mid that can sit back and read the game, Bradley is not. Why Petrov was the one going forward and Bradley sitting back, I don't know.
I'm not clear why, on a 10-point scale, a 6 is considered average and a 5 is bad. This is just grade inflation here. The way it should go... 1-2: conceded multiple own goals (i.e. plays exclusively against ManU), got an early red card, punted a teammate(s) in the berries 3-4: bad performance in a more run-of-the-mill way 5: had neither a positive nor negative influence on the outcome (or the positives were well-balanced by the negatives) 6-7: good performance 8-9: outstanding 10: transformed feces into unicorns I think it could be argued that MB rated a 4 or 5 in this one.
Disappointing that Villa didn't make more of a game of it. For all of City's possession, they created very few chances while Bradley was on the field. Unfortunately, the ones they did get were golden, and they converted them ruthlessly. In the 20 minutes after MB was removed, City had several opportunities to extend their lead. That's not to say he was anything special, but without him, they really had no defensive presence in midfield at all. Friedel made several saves in that stretch, enough to say that he turned in a good game. As for Guzan, he wasn't on the bench. Was he cup-tied by Hull, or does Houllier simply want to push him out the door?
He didn't play in Hull's one FA Cup match while he was there on loan. If I recall correctly the reason given at the time was that Villa didn't want him cup tied.
In retrospect I should probably not have tweeted to MB at halftime the rumor of Gulati's courting Marcelo Bielsa to oversee all aspects of the US men’s national team program.
He looked very rusty to me. Had a couple of nice combination plays and occassionally linked well with fellow midfielders, but had some real clunker passes and he, Petrov and Bannon seemed to get in each other's way more often than not. Also obviously got gassed much earlier than normal for him. Obviously he hasn't started a game for about 2 months, and I think it showed, plus he was playing with entirely new teammates, and I think that showed too. I don't think he'll be starting in the upcoming BPL game his weekend.
He should have followed Silva. As the announcers said, ~ "This is why Silva is Silva. He looked for the ball and he found the ball. Then he finished it". Obviously, he was lucky the ball fell to him but he was also smart for moving laterally toward the cross. Mikey is actually very good with this himself when he plays a more advanced position. Many of his goals are "garbage" goals but being at the right place at the right time is certainly not garbage and requires both the work and the ability to read the game. But he just fell asleep here and was punished. Now, this I don't buy at all. He's been in training for two months. His shape should be fine. There can be plenty of reasons why he did as poorly as he did - some in his control, some in Houllier's, some are just random - but his conditioning can not be questioned.
did anyone expect much more than villa gave given the makeup of both sides? villa lucky to get out of here with this scoreline. also villa are paper thin at the forward position seriously.....
Since my friggin' Fox Soccer feed (for which I paid too much money) kept freezing, I was only able to watch parts of the match, but I agree with the sentiment quoted above. It's hard to say much about Bradley's performance based on this game. I've certainly seen him look better, but it would've taken a sensational effort from him to look notably better than average. He was surrounded by new teammates in a weak line-up against a much stronger team. If he'd looked great, we could say that he's probably gonna excel at Villa. If he'd looked wretched, we could say he's probably doomed at Villa. But he looked mediocre, which leaves us (well, me) unable to say anything with much confidence.
The only good news from the Villa loss...Friedel'sAccent won't have to root for Reading against Friedel'sTeam
An on-site reporter's verdict: "The on-loan American Michael Bradley was tidy on his first start but, beyond sparing his preferred players for Saturday's trip to Bolton, there were few other obvious benefits for Houllier." http://soccernet.espn.go.com/column...-an-easy-progress-for-manchester-city?cc=5901
first his career was over because he did not start the first few league games, now it is over because he didn't impress on his first start. I think I'll hold judgement until I have a slightly larger sample size.
If we're going to worry about having a large enough data set on which to base our analyses, the terrorists have already won.