Sideshow Luiz

How about Barkley? Why did we even buy him?

We've given up so many points from winning positions this season. That was always going to happen.

I don't think selfish had anything to do with it. Should have been nailed on to score either way. That was a shocking piece of "finishing"

Haha. Sorry, missed that.

Someone tell the board that he is 29 so they don't chase him all summer then find out on deadline day.

If Zappacosta plays on the left, and Moses on the right, something is definitely up.

Biggest fix I've ever seen.

I stand corrected.

I feel for the away support. This team has given up.

I think he wanted to leave last summer, but would have had some sort of financial penalty. New contract for more money, now looking for a pay off. He's not stupid.

Holy shit. Pedro has been woeful.

Matches like this happen, but far too many of them this season.

FFS.

We're not a selling club, but we're kind of a net spend 0 club, right now. When teams have lots of money to spend the expensive players make the headlines, but really, the big advantage is that you can afford to miss on a target. Don't like your England International? Get Bravo for 30M. Didn't work out? Drop another 30 on Eduardo. When you don't spend a lot of money you can't make any mistakes in the market. We were left exposed by the combined downgrades of Costa -> Morata, and Matic ->Bakayoko. Spent a net 35M on "upgrading" Chalobah to Drinkwater. Can safely say that we struck out last summer. It seems that Monaco kind of hedge their bets a bit. They get in lots of talent. They don't need all of them to work out. 1 or 2 will fund another summer. Depends on what Roman sees as the identity for the club.

I've been thinking of this "philosophy" situation. I've often raged about our lack of "philosophy". But, I kind of realized that we have/had one. It was instilled by Mourinho. Look at the squad after he left. Same kind of players, in fact, most of his squad have stuck around until these past couple of seasons. It's why when things go bad, we always revert to pragmatism and defending deep and "suffering without the ball". The problem now, is that we don't have any leaders in the team, like those days. So, it doesn't work. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a NEW philosophy. And I think the club want that too. Campos and Jardim would definitely be a step in the right direction (though AVB was supposed to be the start of a new philosophy too).

Dembele is also too old. We don't buy 29 year olds (emergency Giroud aside). The only one from that list that's a possibility is Jorginho. The 3 in La Liga have 0 chance.

Luis Campos will be the most important transfer this summer, I think. Problems at the club need to be fixed from the back room first.

Embarassing

I can't blame Willian for that. He was making a run down the right to get the ball on the counter. Moses hit the first man again. Unfortunately it was in our own half and had half the team running the other way.

That's exactly what I thought when I saw the quote. Nothing about extending.

I agree. I'm more lamenting that it hasn't been done before. City are building with a philosophy. Since Txiki has been there, everything was about getting a team ready for Pep. I'm sure the next manager in will share a similar possession based attacking philosophy.

This is kind of our issue though, isn't it. The real issue. What is our philosophy? We keep going through managers and have power struggles between the manager vs. the board. On one hand, the manager needs the players he needs. On the other, managers want to win now and want to bring in players that may not be in the club's long term interests. Solution: We play a certain way, we have a certain philosophy, we get the players and manager that reflect that philosophy. Jose, AVB, Ancelotti, Scolari.... Couldn't be more of a mash-up.

Ricky, all day!

When I first joined the forum, someone called me an idiot for suggesting that Jose coming back might not be the best decision. I thought, "well, so it's that kind of place here, huh".