belaguttman

We weren't a real club then; we were a franchise owned by a consortium of rich guys who chose to minimally invest. It was a good business decision as they made a profit selling the franchise to another even richer guy.

I agree, both for the organisation and for both coaches

He'll be gone if the media reports are correct and he has lost the dressing room. Of course, that affects the women's team as well

I was wondering this during the second half of last season as it became apparent that we were going to have a significant player turnover. Why weren't we playing our bench and academy players, particularly after it was clear that we would win the Premiership? It seemed to be poor planning.

I think that we are one starting CB snd a DM short of doing it. Souprayen and Reis are too slow and Ugarkovic may or may not be able to do it, but certainly isn't able to play at the necessary level at the moment to do it

Our For-Against is 1-8, the last few seasons it was almost the opposite; as you've identified, our problem is in all three lines, and all we can successfully manage are low-pressure/low-value possession passes. Half our passes last night were back passes

The defensive pivot is the most crucial player in our style of play, both offensively and defensively. Ugarkovic is well below the level required

Twice: the Grand Final, and this game. Same coach.

Probably the worst performance from a City men's team for 4 or 5 years. The scoreline flattered us. Positives: I was watching the Matildas on another screen It was only a 90 minute game. Negatives: We were still on the plane back from Thailand: no intensity, no plan, no movement, no pressing, no ball control, 20 minutes before we even had a shot on goal. If I saw one more back pass I was going to scream.

😱

I missed the first 15 minutes of the game, but overall: happy. Any news on Talbot, it looked like he picked up an injury? Positives: Clean sheet - away generally, a far more positive performance than the game against Tarneit: better pressing, more movement off the ball and improved passing. Jakolis had a far better game...most of the time: Potential = skills + inconsistency. His simulation in the final minute was disgraceful, and I hope that there's an internal club sanction. Arslan has been a great signing and looks like being our best midfielder for some time. Finally, some intelligent subs during the game, Galloway made a positive contribution and should play more often Negatives: When we play some better teams in the next round, all those missed scoring chances and defensive lapses will be punished. We will have played more games by then and hopefully, we will have tightened up.

Wasn't he 'assistant' to 'Lucky' John?

He seems to be a slower Reis.😱

I'm not feeling quite as negative about this season; I do think that we'll be struggling until December, though. Players are definitely too static and playing with too little ball speed, hopefully that will be shown to be a result of player unfamiliarity. It worries me that Souprayen isn't good enough to start as our defence will be pretty poor for quite a while; this also means, in our style of play that our gegenpressing and first ball into attack will also be poor; this slows down our game enormously

I'm surprised that he was a Croatian junior and played Ligue 1. His assist to JMac's offside goal was a glimpse of what he is capable of, but generally his final ball has been poor and he's been bundles off the ball too easily, even against NPL opponents

Oh dear, what a Hearty performance that was. It felt inevitable that we would be paying for our failure to take our chances. Positives Arslan - great signing We'll be good when we click as a team. Negatives Porous defence; Nuno is too slow (although he was unlucky to concede the penalty); Ugarkovic needs to improve to match Aidan O'Neill, both defensively and offensively. Service to JMac needs to improve. It'll probably be a fairly ho-hum first half of the season

CFG clearly sees us as passive consumers of product; on the field and in the merch shop.

The W League team results improved once Jess Fishlock joined the coaching team

He was sharing the W League coaching with Jess Fishlock in the year that they won the Premiership.

I'd have him back, if we had the visa space and cap

I think that he's quite a rigid coach, which is not a bad thing if you have a team to implement your style and tactics, and if the players buy into your methodology and the relationship. I think that the problem lies in that when the results aren't coming, the reaction is to try even harder, rather than to try differently.

That's a big ask when there are 10 players behind the ball by the time we get it to the box

Yes, once we win the ball, our first pass in attacking transition is often back, if not our second pass is back. OK if there's a player making a third man run, but that's the movement off the ball that we aren't seeing at the moment

That's why our ball progression up the field is so slow. As Cruyff said, an influential player will have the ball for 5% of the match, their biggest influence is what they do without the ball for the other 95%

Yes, that's why he got the job