TeddyBear

Watched the City game, they could've scored 10. Think they had something like 25 shots. Most people were expecting them to go there to defend a 0-0 (which would've been a decent result) but they went to attack and are now qualified. Needless to say, sadly our club would never take such an approach.

Go 1-0 up early and take a huge confidence lift. Park the bus for the rest of the half without coming even close to another shot attempt. So frustrating. Regardless, Liverpool are such a poor attacking team. Game will mostly likely end in a 1-1.

Once Guardiola leaves Bayern (this season or next depends if he wants to extend) the title race will become more interesting. Now that Ferguson is retired there is only one manager in the world who can get his teams to CONSTANTLY be at the top. Staying at the top is so much harder than getting there. Whoever Bayern replace him with will have a hard time. I hope Bayern won't get unlucky with injuries again 2nd half of the season, he deserves his CL win with Bayern. Look how much the injuries at Barca and Madrid are affecting them at the moment, Guardiola has had to deal with these kind of injuries pretty much his entire reign there. Few weeks ago he fielded 0 CBs against Leverkusen (not an easy game) because every single one was injured. Agree with the previous poster aswell, if you want to blame anyone for weaking their rivals in Germany - look no further than Dortmund. Constantly buying best players from the 'rest' of the German teams.

Is it just me or does it sound like he already knows he is sacked. Astonishing rant, astonishing.

Fabregas and Matic have both ran nearly 1km more than our 3rd highest player. Stats aren't always meaningful but it shows how little protection they have at the moment(or help from CBs). Can't expect them to have energy for attack when they have to do so much defensively.

Towards the end of the half they showed the ground different players had covered. Very worrying that Matic and Fabregas so far ahead of our other players. They are having to do a lot of running because of the poor play by our center halfs i feel. If we want to play the high line the CBs have to be more aggressive. I'm not sure if its because our defenders are used to the park-the-bus/deep defense or they are simply being outplayed by Newcastle players. Probably a combination of both.

First post I've done but I've been thinking a similar thing for a while. Been thinking about this psycholgical side for a while. I'm using my own experiences in life as my basis. You can't do what you don't like effectively for a long period of time, you get mental restrictions. You simply get disappointed and start looking for alternatives. Most of our attacking players have grown up in environments where the most skillful are hailed as the best. They've become the players they are because of their attacking talent, they look forward to the game so they can get out there and show millions what they are capble of attacking-wise. Everyone keeps saying results always come first but I believe deep down they feel much more powerful emotions and satisfaction if they have an amazing attacking game and draw 3-3 rather than grind out a 1-0 win with 2 shots all game against an inferior opponent. If you think logically the 1-0 is obviously the better result but you simply can't sustain that mentality with certain players. I know at least I would be having so many dark thoughts if I was in Hazard's place last season. Can I really fulfill my potential playing like that? Did I spend 15 years of my youth working so hard for this? And so on, and so on. You will never hear anyone say it but deep down they are all just humans who want to have fun in their work. And these aren't the thoughts of this season, but last season. When we were looking for a new manager a couple years ago there was this usual Guardiola v Mourinho debate(before either had a new club). The most common thing I saw mentioned was that Guardiola only did it because of his amazing players and since Barcelona keep having success without him, he isn't really all that. I believe that's exactly the reason he is the best manager in the world. He was able to create a long-term succesful environment because his players were doing what they most wanted to do. There are exceptions which follow the example I brought earlier(ie Ibrahimovic has never not been the main man in the team and he simply didn't want to play that way for Guardiola) but by and large he established the fundamentals for a decade of success. I don't believe Jose can do that, it is not in his nature. Jose wants to be the main man, it has to be his way that gets us the titles. Because we aren't mentally ready to go another season like the last we will start playing more attacking football this season (already have to be honest, all games are a lot more open). The problem is we are not really good at that stuff because his focus has always been defesnvie and set-pieces. Its up to Jose now to show he can be flexible and train a team with attaking mentality, if he can't he is done here. There was this great comparison of Pellegrini and Mourinho recently in one ESPN article. Pellegrini spend most of his training time on attacking movement while Mourinho prefers his attacking to improvise and mostly does defending and set-piece drills ont raining. Its a cliche but theres a reason for this 3rd season syndrome, you simply can't do what you don't like for 3 seasons in a row.