***official stoke at manchester city match thread***

[Ted Hughes]

If Chelsea win they have a 6 point advantage which we have to win back by us beating Everton & also them fucking up v a lesser team. We did it last season though.

[blues2win]

We could beat Chelsea of course!

[ayrshireblue]

Makes no sense that you start with 2 strikers who can't win headers against a team which defends deep and then have a good crosser lobbing them in.

Poor team selection from Pellegrini.

agreed. against stoke you either play Dzeko or Negredo or both. with Negredo out Dezeko had to start. he didn't look injured from last week's "injury"

Or if you play smaller players the ball should stay on the grass. No need to play to Stoke's strengths at all. Right personnel, wrong attitude. We've looked second best in all three games so far this season. I blame the World Cup hangover for many of our failings at the moment but that excuse will soon wear out.

[blues2win]

Jovetic is not small; he's over 6 foot and good in the air. He's also much more mobile than Dzeko. It's always easy to say that someone on the bench should have started. I'm afraid the whole team was sluggish and complacent. If Yaya had scored rather than hitting the bar just before half time it might have been different but he didn't. Let's face it we were pretty shit. I do think it was a penalty against Yaya; there was clearly contact.

[Bridge'srightfoot]

I wonder maybe if someone like Lampard just might have given us another option today.

[ashton287]

Wrong team selection to start with.

Wrong subs later on. Aguero shouldn't have started and when dzeko came on it should have been for aguero not jovetic.

Navas or milner should of started over Nasri.

Ya ya was so poor. He has gone from being the best cm in the world to making carrick look world class.

Ref was a fucking joke as well which didn't help.

[Ted Hughes]

We could beat Chelsea of course!

If they defend like that, we'll beat them twice.

[Bridge'srightfoot]

Hughes and Stoke deserve full credit for that. They were superb defensively and dangerous on the counter. They executed their gameplan well and in truth it was fairly comfortable for them, we dug out a couple of half chances but they were never really 'hanging on'.
They also showed more pace and creativity going forward than you would expect from a Stoke side. Fair play.

These games happen and at least it's early in the season, you put them behind you and go and beat Arsenal the next game.

[Hutch's Shoulder]

Hughes and Stoke deserve full credit for that. They were superb defensively and dangerous on the counter. They executed their gameplan well and in truth it was fairly comfortable for them, we dug out a couple of half chances but they were never really 'hanging on'.
They also showed more pace and creativity going forward than you would expect from a Stoke side. Fair play.

These games happen and at least it's early in the season, you put them behind you and go and beat Arsenal the next game.

Yes, that's why we watch sport because the result is never absolutely certain. Who would want to watch games where there was no chance of an upset, even if it meant we were guaranteed to win.

Take it on the chin, but make damn sure we don't do it again.

[Herb]

Looks like Joe's in his usual early season stupor as that's another couple of points dropped due to comedy capers.

[kinkylola]

that was comical goal keeping ... and defending leading up to it. Pretty poor performance, no professionalism and aguero looked really selfish to me. I think we should have kept with Dzeko and Jovetic who were developing some understanding and leading a successful attack.

extremely disappointed obviously, AND I can't very well talk shit to the rag fans who looked like shit once again ... fuck me.

[nottsblue]

A piss poor day at the office. They happen. Its how we bounce back after that will count

[ashton287]

Looks like Joe's in his usual early season stupor as that's another couple of points dropped due to comedy capers.

Good. We can drop him early and not have to worry every time a team get a corner.

[Clowncrete]

Makes no sense that you start with 2 strikers who can't win headers against a team which defends deep and then have a good crosser lobbing them in.

Poor team selection from Pellegrini.

agreed. against stoke you either play Dzeko or Negredo or both. with Negredo out Dezeko had to start. he didn't look injured from last week's "injury"

Or if you play smaller players the ball should stay on the grass. No need to play to Stoke's strengths at all. Right personnel, wrong attitude. We've looked second best in all three games so far this season. I blame the World Cup hangover for many of our failings at the moment but that excuse will soon wear out.

Our attack lacked pace and Stoke were organised. The smaller players were just tackled and out-muscled out of the game.

[Bluemoon16]

Joe Hart and his ridiculous fuckups at times makes wonder if he's a member of a game fixing mafia ring! Bring on Arsenal.

[Dubaimancityfan]

Wrong team selection to start with.

Wrong subs later on. Aguero shouldn't have started and when dzeko came on it should have been for aguero not jovetic.

Navas or milner should of started over Nasri.

Ya ya was so poor. He has gone from being the best cm in the world to making carrick look world class.

Ref was a fucking joke as well which didn't help.

Agree with the Nasri bit. In the 3 games he played he has not contributed much. Could have done with pace of Navas or the diligence of Milner.

Don't agree on the Yaya bit. He was the only one who had shots on goal, came close to scoring and should have got a penalty call.

[Dameerto]

Part of the problem was that Fernando had to go off early, meaning we couldn't bring Fernandinho on to pair with him later in the game for Aguero/Jovetic, which would have given us a more solid centre and pushed Yaya up to bother their back line. It might have been Pellegrini's intention to have Dzeko and Yaya in their box later in the game with Navas and Sagna (and Kolarov) supplying the ammunition if the trickery hadn't worked by then. I think the plan was undone by an early injury and some sloppy play to give them a goal and a sniff of three points.

[stevefromdonny]

If Chelsea win they have a 6 point advantage which we have to win back by us beating Everton & also them fucking up v a lesser team. We did it last season though.

have Chelsea played one more game then us, because I thought they had 9pts and we have 6 pts

[stevefromdonny]

could the players tell us fans why they need to pass the ball to each other but going nowhere, if a team like stoke park the bus then we just play into their hands as we never went forward. and why do we need to pass to yaya every fucking time, then he follows the ball to get it back, now i'm not a pro footballer or even played for a living but I even know when you have passed a ball find some space not follow it like we did at school. and cant we play the ball faster like what stoke did, when they went forward they had 3-4 players up with the ball, when we broke forward after say a corner we had two players going forward and others just plodding on NOT GOOD AT ALL

[sheblue]

Bad day at the office. I blame the World Cup.