Seven and a half mins.

[Ted Hughes]

Plenty of food for thought in both them articles above although the first one does have a lot of holes in it.

One point that I wholeheartedly agree with is that Aguero needs a partner up front to be at his best.

What about deploying silva in behind him.

Yep could work but I'd be more inclined to have a physical player ala Negredo.

I liked Silva behind Dzeko away at Bayern last season, thought that worked a treat.

Would make sense to Start Silva there v Barca

Again. it's all down to how the rest play. It's not true that we automatically become solid adding Milner or similar in the middle, or even if we play 5 there, either now or under Mancini. You would still have Yaya & Nasri, & the bit neither piece mentions is the players pressing the ball, rather than jogging around in lines as Neville is referring to. In this system with Silva up there or even in the midfield, we still require 90 mins from him, Nasri & Yaya, pressing.

It's always down to whether they produce it on the day. We need more effort, or to adjust the playing staff imo. Just tactics or selecton won't cover it.

[Blue Since 76]

We definitely need more effort, but I didn't see much evidence of it tonight either and the result has as much to do with playing a piss poor side as anything we did. I was expecting a real difference tonight, with us up at it from the off, yet there was still no urgency.

On top of that, the other problem was still there - every time we lost the ball, Leicester were allowed to run straight at the back 4. There was no cover from midfield at all and a better side would have punished us.

This 10 day break may have come at a good time for us to work out some of the issues to at least keep us in 2nd