Why Man City Are Out Of Their Depth Against The Best Sides In The World

Man City’s failures against the top teams have been well documented; this article will examine how Man City are out of their depth and how the squad he has been offered is not equipped to play against better sides than themselves.

For me, the Man City squad is set up to play 1 way, which is to dominate possession and play intricate football. This works brilliantly against the likes of West Brom or West Ham, sides they are much stronger than and so will have the majority of the ball. This does not work however, against teams like Barcelona, who have better technical players than Man City. The problem with Man City’s technical players is that they cannot play any other way. They are not fast with the exception of Navas and Aguero so are not able to play on the counter attack against stronger sides. Equally, they are not physically strong compared to the opposition and so cannot overpower their adversaries . This means they have to try to play their normal passing game, which allows them to get picked off by stronger teams who are better at this passing game.

This is the fault of the Man City recruitment staff for signing too many similar players. It is not likely that a team with 2 strikers fielded in a 4-4-2 will win against the likes of Real Madrid, this is shown by the rarity in which it is deployed by other teams yet Pellegrini is often forced into this through a lack of other options. Equally, playing Silva, Milner and Nasri in wide positions against a strong side is not a great option, since you lose the option of a fast counter attack, really you can only play 1 of them on the flanks and 1 behind the striker. Furthermore, playing Toure in a defensive midfield position is not a great option, simply because his defending is not up to scratch. This does not leave Pellegrini with a strong enough line up to beat a good side, since currently only 3 of the 4 positions behind the striker are filled with Fernando and Fernandinho looking like a below par central midfield combo. Jesus Navas is also charged with playing an important role in this side, something he is not good enough to do.

In addition, the state of Man City’s defence also does not cut the mustard. Vincent Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta are the only defenders in their squad that are good enough to play against the top sides, with the likes of the ageing Demichelis and the erratic Mangala not up to standard for a tough European night.

This evidence mounts therefore, to show that Man City are not good enough to challenge the top sides, and this is down to the recruitment, since no top quality players have been brought in since Sergio Aguero was added to the squad. As we are led to believe Pellegrini has little say in transfers, to blame him for the failings of an ageing squad is harsh.

Why The Clubs At The Bottom Of The Premier League Have Got Their Priorities Wrong.

The old adage for teams fighting relegation is that you need a goalscorer to keep you up. After all, goals win games. It is this idea which has led Leicester City to splash out on Krameric and Ulloa for a combined fee of a reported £17million, and to Sunderland spending £6million plus large wages on an ageing Jermain Defoe. The stats however, suggest that there is a definite over emphasis on buying strikers.

If this season’s premier league ended with the current bottom 3 going down, then the last 5 seasons will have seen the 3 sides who scored the least each season going down just 7 times. That shows, that more than 1 in 2 sides who are battling against the drop scored less than a team that stayed up ahead of them. In contrast, the teams who have conceded the highest number of goals have gone down on 12 occasions, reflecting that it is the defences which are most crucial to premier league survival. Perhaps recruitment teams should look at statistics and not take notice of old clichés. 

Why The Premier League Is In Its Worst State Since Its Inception

Alexis Sanchez, Angel Di Maria, Mesut Ozil. All were supposedly blockbuster signings yet all of them were castaway by their previous clubs. In fact, if you were naming premier league players who might possibly get in the teams of Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or Barcelona you’re looking at David De Gea, Thibaut Courtois, Sergio Aguero and Eden Hazard. The Premier League doesn’t attract the top quality players anymore, only Aguero of these was at his peak when he joined the league, the others have had to develop in the premier league. Gone are the days that Premier League Clubs can attract the best in Europe. Yet this is only part of the Premier League’s problem.

The over spending of almost every team on frankly average players is evident. You only have to look at Man City spending £220 million in the last 3 seasons without buying a single top class player. Then you look at Liverpool throwing £20million at mediocre players last summer, Tottenham doing the same the summer before and you realise why these teams are struggling to improve. They’ve both had the resources to do so, more so than many of their foreign counterparts. Even further down the league, Southampton widely praised for their summer dealings given the end result, yet £12million for Shane Long would now be seen as a standard price in the league. If Long played abroad and was bought by a foreign side, I’d imagine he wouldn’t cost close to this figure and if he did he would be considered a flop, not an average signing. When Newcastle splashed £6million on Emmanuel Riviere, French journalists couldn’t believe what had happened, believing the player was worth closer to £3million. The fact is, premier league clubs are grossly overspending. This is shown by Sunderland having a strike force of £32 million worth of strikers, yet being embarrassingly poor in front of goal.

The Premier League’s lower clubs are not the standard they used to be. It used to be an argument that whilst other leagues had stronger top clubs, the Premier League had stronger teams further down the division. Whilst this is impossible to test completely, the standard has declined considerably. Previously, I would look at the bottom of the league and often think that at least 1 of the teams that would go down did not deserve to, now I think most of the bottom half of the table deserve relegation. The fact that a team like Newcastle can get to halfway through the season and be effectively safe reflects the low standard of the division.

How Newcastle and Sunderland represent opposites

Why Newcastle United and Sunderland represent opposites

In terms of transfer dealings, these teams are at complete opposite ends of the scale. Newcastle prefer to sign up and coming talents and not sign players over 27. This model has shown plenty of strengths but also several weaknesses. This is reflected in the fact that players such as Yohan Cabaye have come and gone but fetched a high price, although it represents a risk, as the likes of Emmanuel Riviere have shown. Newcastle hope to fetch a high re-sale value, and this is an opposite to how Sunderland approach many of their transfers. Signings such as Wes Brown, John O’Shea and Jermain Defoe, lead Sunderland to believe they have a more reliable transfer model, based on signing players who are said to be proven in the Premier League. The down side of this is there is next to no re-sale value on these players, and means that Sunderland will struggle to be self-sufficient in the way that Newcastle is. The approach to managers is also shown to be a polar opposite approach these days, with Newcastle aiming to keep Alan Pardew long-term despite all the hiccups the club had during his reign, whilst Sunderland tend to change their manager at least once a season, most recently for Dick Advocat to arrive at the club. Even after Pardew’s departure, Newcastle have aimed to retain stability by promoting his assistant John Carver.

Statistics

In terms of the match, I found it surprising that of the squads available for Saturday’s match and not including injured and suspended players, Newcastle have more derby day experience particularly due to Newcastle’s lengthy injury list. Newcastle have 47 appearances in the Derby within the squad for Sunday, whilst Sunderland have only 35. The most experienced of these is Jonas Gutierrez who has 8 derbies under his belt, followed by Jack Colback who has played only 1 derby in Newcastle colours but 6 for Sunderland, and Mike Williamson and Tim Krul who have played 6. For Sunderland, Sebastian Larsson is their most experienced for this occasion having appeared 7 times, whilst Lee Cattermole and John O’Shea have both played 5 derbies.

In the 9 derbies since Newcastle returned to the premier league there have been 5 reds, 1 for Newcastle and 4 for Sunderland. There have been 49 yellows in 9 matches at an average of 5.4 per match and Lee Cattermole has yet to play a Tyne-Wear Derby in which he hasn’t been booked.

You have to go back as far as 2006 for a time that a team came from behind to win a Derby, when Albert Luque wrapped it up in a 4-1 win at Sunderland for Newcastle.

Amazingly despite racking up 82 appearances in Derbies between the players on show only 6 goals have been scored by current Newcastle or Sunderland players they are Adam Johnson 3 times, Ryan Taylor, Jack Colback (For Sunderland) and Steven Fletcher.

There hasn’t been a goalless Tyne Wear Derby in 32 matches since 1990.
Only Papiss Cisse (11) and Ayoze (5) have scored more than 3 premier league goals for Newcastle this season and only Steven Fletcher (4) and Adam Johnson (4) have scored more than 3 for Sunderland.  Only QPR and Aston Villa have as few players scoring 4 or more goals. Sunderland’s top scorer only having 4 is also the lowest in the division.

Newcastle have won just 1 of the 5 games that Moussa Sissoko has previously captained them in.