Granted St. Andrews is one of the toughest places to go to and almost no one gets a win there (Chelsea lost there) but that performance by us today was unacceptable. Don't really have much to say except our team has gone off the boil at the worst possible time with those around us winning. We signed Dzeko to score but Silva and Tevez only seem interested in giving it to each other, leaving Dzeko as a hard working but underfed supporting player when he is a famous goalscorer. Adebayor mk. 2 but with a much better attitude as even though he is ignored, he is working hard and doing a lot more little things for the team than Adebayor did. We've forgotten how to defend, heart in mouth every time a ball is whipped forward with only Kompany appearing to have any composure. Milner at City just isn't working. We were bound to have a misfit or two from so many signings and while many of our signings I'm happy or content with (Silva, Kolarov, Balotelli, Yaya Toure), Milner is regularly average and too slow to play on the wings. And then Vieira came on for the injured De Jong and so it was written: "City must f*ck up". Vieira is a legend but at this stage is an absolutely disgracefully awful player! He has single-handedly lost us more than one game this season and did so again today. No words to describe how utterly furious I am at him. He and Jo have no place at our club, I'd rather reserve kids play. Speaking of which, I wouldn't care if we had spent a trillion pounds, the squad isn't good enough. Just look at the bench today, it says it all. We have no one at all like Silva in case he is injured, needs a rest, or if we need added creativity. And now that we've shipped a full team out on loan we seem to have very little in reserve. Startling considering the amount of business we've done over the last couple of years. We were crap and Birmingham deserved their equalizer and 2-2 draw. 2-2 there is not a bad result on paper but our performance level was just so poor that my head hurts from the stress of watching it.
I only saw the second half. That was certainly miserable. Full agreement on Vieira. It seemed like everytime they called his name it because of another mistake. On the other hand, is there any evidence that Garreth Barry was actually in the game?
We seem to have the slowest midfield in the league, this should have been addressed in January. De Jong is fantastic and a must in our team, but Milner and Barry (who has played very well at times this season but my point stands and he only suits a certain type of game) are soooo slow that it hurts to watch. With Johnson injured for a long time and Silva being just one man we're in serious trouble as far as creativity goes. SWP may be wank nowadays but I'd strongly consider getting him in the team as we badly need some width, some direct attacking play. Milner/Barry/Vieira/Jo are slowing us down badly, if Milner shows no improvement then we must consider him an expensive mistake. Liverpool are/were apparently willing to pay over 20 million for him so we could get back pretty much everything we paid if true. We're still a long way off seriously challenging the league IMO. We've shown we can do it for half a season but we're still a distance from putting up a full-blooded fight for the entire season. We badly, badly need someone like Wesley Sneijder in our squad.
Mancini was very irate in his post-match interview, accused the players of sleeping and said he may drop Hart for Given. He also accused Phillips of diving but most of his ire was aimed at our own players for the lousy performance.
The Barry-Vieira-Milner midfield must be one of the slowest to ever play in the EPL. The job of Tevez and Silva was not to provide balls for Dzeko, that was the midfield's job. Carlos and David are supposed to do just what they did: run from the wide forward position to the centre and score. The Vinny-Boateng partnership makes some silly mistakes. It's not so much that City fails to score, but that fails to win due to conceding silly goals or making stupid fouls. Free kicks and corners are a bit of an issue, too. Overall, I'd say it's the midfield that is not working, leaving the foremost striker alone and the defense uncovered. Guys like Bellamy and Ireland could on occasion provide that spark from the midfield into the attack, and De Jong is essential for the defensive work of the midfield. Perhaps it's time to move Silva more into a midfielder role and less of a second striker, and allow Kompany to play again as a DM. At this point, the goal is shifting from winning the league to just managing a Top Four finish.
Well, I'd disagree here, Silva almost never shoots and is responsible for most of our defence-splitting passes. If it isn't his job to provide balls, what is his job? He does play in a three up front but drifts and plays behind the forwards. He is our only real creative outlet for creating goals and yet he seems to favour Tevez over Dzeko. Adebayor had the same problem where the match seemed to bypass him due to the focus on Tevez. Dzeko ended up out on the wing yesterday which made me despair as he is one of the world's top target men and should be in the middle. Not one pass of note was made to him in a threatening area, he had to try and do everything himself and in fact a clever little run won us the free-kick that Kolarov scored. Honestly, if Tevez does leave - not that I want him to - I think it would benefit Dzeko as he was just ignored yesterday. I wish Michael Johnson and Gai Assulin would reach full fitness as they would at least offer a dynamic Barry/Milner/Vieira can't.
Guys here is my PowerStats breakdown of City's performance yesterday For a breakdown for what it all means, read more here: http://worldsoccerreader.com/2011/0...nce-against-birmingham-city-by-the-numbers-2/