by kinkylola » Sat Aug 14, 2010 2:17 pm
I guess I should say that a point away to spurs is an acceptable result. It's a bit silly to say you can be pleased with a point. Given the circumstances, in the first half we were absolutely played off the pitch, but I don't exactly put that down to the players, who all looked fairly solid and reliable (first time in a long while .. ever maybe? ... that I have felt confidence in our defence) Mancini got the formation TOTALLY wrong imo. I'm a big fan of bobby and I have respect for him as a tactician, but for me that was so negative and not only was it negative but the setup was completely not fitting the way we tried to play. having tevez up front on his lonesome was a horrible choice ... he was never anywhere near the box ... which may actually be tevez's fault, he was playing like he still had ade infront of him when he was supposed to be the top man, I can't imagine that was mancini's doing.
we lined up like this IMO
------------gk
d------d---------d------d
---dm-----dm-----dm
ml----------------------mr
-----------am------------
yes ... silva and swp (johnson changed this later) were playing so deep I would not consider them wingers but wide midfield players. De jong yaya and barry were all three sat deep and tevez was playing were an attacking midfielder should be ... it was very ugly to look at. 5 of those 6 players need to be playing "1 position" forward for us to have any chance of winning that game, and when we had made our subs in the second half, especially johnson, we looked dangerous on atleast one side ... until you realized that tevez was hanging around with the mid's and no where near the box. Tevez is not a lone striker, mancini should never try that again.
we should have started like this in my opinion (bcak line was correct already
-----------------nigel-----------------
---------yaya-----------barry---------
tevez----------------------------silva
-----------------ADE------------------
johnson should have come on for tevez or silva at 60min or so because I don't think either are match fit yet, and tevez is not showing a lot of hunger which is worrying. If silva needed to come off I would have brought on Jo to link with ade and let johnson have a free role to drift wide on either side.
just for me ... the result was "acceptable" but the formation/tactics were all wrong. It's away and we definitely could have lost that game, but we also could have won it if we had gone with hunger and the right tactics. That being said, it we draw the tough games instead of losing them, we'll get into the top 4.
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