***HAMMERS V CITY - OFFICIAL MATCH THREAD***

[gillie]

Second goal for the hammers Joe is as much to blame for it as anyone else he should have come and either caught the ball or punched it out.But overall we are too fuckin slow when attacking once we win the ball back in our half.The amount of times we could have hit them on the break tonight only to slow the play up was criminal in it's failure.

[South Stand Balti]

If Bony had been fit I think MP would have put him on before Nacho. Sterling and Brown....are they worth the money? It probably doesn't matter but maybe we could have spent it better. I have great hopes for KDB but his away form smacks of attitude.

[hartfordsheartbeat]

Guarantee you even at this stage give any half decent manager the reins and we still win this league, leave pellegrini in charge and we'll win the grand total of fk all. Engineer my arse, saboteur more like.

[Spurge]

Guarantee you even at this stage give any half decent manager the reins and we still win this league, leave pellegrini in charge and we'll win the grand total of fk all. Engineer my arse, saboteur more like.

Like your name don't like your post.

It's not pellers fault Otamendi switches off for the throw in - unless you genuinely believe that's how pellers demonstrates that as how to defend throw ins against us in the last 3rd in training? How do you think he managed to win two trophies in his first season at city and in the prem?
I don't agree with everything he did - Yaya wouldn't have started for me and I'd have had him off instead of delph. But keep things in perspective please.

[Chopper]

Seems like a done deal No transfers. Pep is coming.

[Ray78]

I am not happy with the overall performance but at least we managed to get a point from a tricky away game. As for the title, we do have the talent and know how and still have 15 league games but I have my doubts we can hit top form and sustain it for the rest of this season.

[Douglas Higginbottom]

Watching the game there seemed to be so much going wrong. We kept giving the ball away and Silva was arguably yhte worst culprit. Early on we seemed to be second to get to so many loose balls.

Key players like Silva,Yaya and KDB were just anonymous as was Sterling when he came on. Yaya on the first goal was a joke just letting Kouyate just breeze past him.That 2nd goal was embarrassingly bad with the Otter falling asleep. So having said all that how come we managed a draw against arguably one of the better sides who it seems played brilliantly.

Of course we had Kun who is looking close to his best and scored two goals and nearly a another with that sublime little lob. Shame he didn't catch that attempt at the end as we would have won. Delph did hit the post as well and I thought Kelechi was very bright when he came on. Just a shame he didn't start.

Pellers suggested we didn't defend too badly overall but that's no help when two major mistakes cost goals. Yaya can be seen as embarrassing at times if he is hargetted in any way by running players from deep but he did make a few vital clearances in the penalty area. He wasn't all bad even tho I would 100% say he should never be in a 2 man midfield.

Were we too slow in the build up. Probably yes because the key players we atta ck with were mostly having a bad day and let's not forget WHU were defending in big numbers and we don't have any sort of high ball pass in our game with nobody that can head a ball.

Is Demic good enough.No but we are stuck with him there one of the others gets fit.Oh for Denayer. Should Yaya be playing all the time and in that role. Of course not and Kelechi should play more but as much if not more than anything else I want to see all our attacking players play well and A) stop giving the ball away so easily and B) get the movement better so there are better and more passing options.

Don't know if it was highlighted on here and it wasn't shown on MotD (no surprise) but near the end Kelechi put a brilliant ball thu for KDB which seemed to be perfectly in his path but as I thought he would just shoot he tried to be clever and cut back inside and inevitably lost the ball. I was fuming.

[Dameerto]

Our season is in danger of fizzling out, Pellegrini doesn't seem to want to put in the direction and leadership that the team needs and we don't seem to have any players capable of stepping up and telling home truths in the dressing room when needed. We're on a knife edge.

[aaron bond]

Guarantee you even at this stage give any half decent manager the reins and we still win this league, leave pellegrini in charge and we'll win the grand total of fk all. Engineer my arse, saboteur more like.

Like your name don't like your post.

It's not pellers fault Otamendi switches off for the throw in - unless you genuinely believe that's how pellers demonstrates that as how to defend throw ins against us in the last 3rd in training? How do you think he managed to win two trophies in his first season at city and in the prem?
I don't agree with everything he did - Yaya wouldn't have started for me and I'd have had him off instead of delph. But keep things in perspective please.

We didn't win two trophies in Pellegrini's first season because of a strong defence. It was because we scored so many goals.

Our defence was pretty poor that year. Demichelis was dreadful until March and we even played Nastasic in plenty of games. But because we were scoring goals in record numbers, a shaky defence wasn't as much of an issue.

Our defence still hasn't improved and we've spend a lot of money on Mangala and Otamendi. Mangala has shown glimpses of improvement this season but a lot of question marks remain, and Otamendi is completely off the pace. Pellegrini has to take responsibility for buying these two. I hope they can turn it around but it's very uncertain right now.

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

That was a crackling good game of togger.
Yes Dav'a radar was off today but he still got involved, whereas KDB didn't want to know. Yaya was fine and worked hard.
Sterling did three parts of fuck all when he came on. I thought Delph should have stayed on and Kevin gone off.
Aguero is magical.
That is a decent point at a tough place to go and a performance with a little bit of guts about it.
Shame about the gifted second goal.

[john@staustell]

That was a crackling good game of togger.
Yes Dav'a radar was off today but he still got involved, whereas KDB didn't want to know. Yaya was fine and worked hard.
Sterling did three parts of fuck all when he came on. I thought Delph should have stayed on and Kevin gone off.
Aguero is magical.
That is a decent point at a tough place to go and a performance with a little bit of guts about it.
Shame about the gifted second goal.

Good post. Some people need to calm down.

I reckon Delph is still being protected

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

Our season is in danger of fizzling out, Pellegrini doesn't seem to want to put in the direction and leadership that the team needs and we don't seem to have any players capable of stepping up and telling home truths in the dressing room when needed. We're on a knife edge.

This is such an over reaction. What's wrong with us?
We are involved in the title race and probably will be for the foreseeable.
If we beat a mid table side in midweek, we'll be in our fourth cup final in six years.
We have a very winnable Chumps League draw. And another cup fixture to come as well. We've been in reasonable form and best ever striker has come alive again.
We may or may not win any or all of these competitions, but the season is just coming alive not fizzling out.

I'm just reading that post to see if I missed some sarcasm or if it was meant to be ironic.
Nope, it seems to be just a runny turd of a message..

[Michael Brookes]

Our season is in danger of fizzling out, Pellegrini doesn't seem to want to put in the direction and leadership that the team needs and we don't seem to have any players capable of stepping up and telling home truths in the dressing room when needed. We're on a knife edge.

This is such an over reaction. What's wrong with us?
We are involved in the title race and probably will be for the foreseeable.
If we beat a mid table side in midweek, we'll be in our fourth cup final in six years.
We have a very winnable Chumps League draw. And another cup fixture to come as well. We've been in reasonable form and best ever striker has come alive again.
We may or may not win any or all of these competitions, but the season is just coming alive not fizzling out.

I'm just reading that post to see if I missed some sarcasm or if it was meant to be ironic.
Nope, it seems to be just a runny turd of a message..

I know what you're saying and I largely agee, the frustrating thing is that because we have such good chances to progress in all 4 competitions it's awful to see how badly we are playing and that the feeling is we're probably not going to take full advantage.

[Spurge]

Guarantee you even at this stage give any half decent manager the reins and we still win this league, leave pellegrini in charge and we'll win the grand total of fk all. Engineer my arse, saboteur more like.

Like your name don't like your post.

It's not pellers fault Otamendi switches off for the throw in - unless you genuinely believe that's how pellers demonstrates that as how to defend throw ins against us in the last 3rd in training? How do you think he managed to win two trophies in his first season at city and in the prem?
I don't agree with everything he did - Yaya wouldn't have started for me and I'd have had him off instead of delph. But keep things in perspective please.

We didn't win two trophies in Pellegrini's first season because of a strong defence. It was because we scored so many goals.

Our defence was pretty poor that year. Demichelis was dreadful until March and we even played Nastasic in plenty of games. But because we were scoring goals in record numbers, a shaky defence wasn't as much of an issue.

Our defence still hasn't improved and we've spend a lot of money on Mangala and Otamendi. Mangala has shown glimpses of improvement this season but a lot of question marks remain, and Otamendi is completely off the pace. Pellegrini has to take responsibility for buying these two. I hope they can turn it around but it's very uncertain right now.

Wouldn't necessarily disagree with that, but the point I was responding to was that the poster was stating that we'd win nothing this season with pellers in charge. So I thought it was worth reminding him that we have seen the same manager win 2 trophies in a single season not so long ago - so he's done it before and as you suggest we conceded goals that season as well so surely means we could do it again.

How certain are we that new signings are at Pellers request, players that he earmarks? I'm not at all certain they are - he's a 442 man at heart, signings in the summer are a better fit with 433 or 4231. The manager always shoulders responsibility when things go wrong, but as fans doesn't mean we should just accept that without seeing the bigger picture?

[nottsblue]

A good performance. But it is great performances that win titles. We have too many good performances away and not enough nous it seems to turn those into three points.

Still, I'll be happy if we win the cup (don't mind which one) and finishing second. A good platform to build on next season for whomever is in charge. Pellers, Pep or otherwise. And we are still in the title race for sure and we don't know how Arsenal will cope with the pressure, they may well fold and crash. You can't win every time

[Cocacolajojo1]

This is such an over reaction. What's wrong with us?
We are involved in the title race and probably will be for the foreseeable.
If we beat a mid table side in midweek, we'll be in our fourth cup final in six years.
We have a very winnable Chumps League draw. And another cup fixture to come as well. We've been in reasonable form and best ever striker has come alive again.
We may or may not win any or all of these competitions, but the season is just coming alive not fizzling out.

I'm just reading that post to see if I missed some sarcasm or if it was meant to be ironic.
Nope, it seems to be just a runny turd of a message..

I think you're being harsh there at the end. I can sympathize with Dameerto's feelings. It's just weird supporting a Manchester City nowadays.Sometimes, it seems to me that aA loss feels like a catastrophee, a draw feels like a loss, a narrow win like a draw and only a clear victory truly feels like a victory. Especially when you also read headlines run something along the lines of "Manchester City drop vital points in draw". The emotional perspectives get skewed is what I'm saying. Sometimes you manage to remain calm and look at the table. Sometimes you get swept away with it.

[aaron bond]

Our season is in danger of fizzling out, Pellegrini doesn't seem to want to put in the direction and leadership that the team needs and we don't seem to have any players capable of stepping up and telling home truths in the dressing room when needed. We're on a knife edge.

This is such an over reaction. What's wrong with us?
We are involved in the title race and probably will be for the foreseeable.
If we beat a mid table side in midweek, we'll be in our fourth cup final in six years.
We have a very winnable Chumps League draw. And another cup fixture to come as well. We've been in reasonable form and best ever striker has come alive again.
We may or may not win any or all of these competitions, but the season is just coming alive not fizzling out.

I'm just reading that post to see if I missed some sarcasm or if it was meant to be ironic.
Nope, it seems to be just a runny turd of a message..

If I'm not mistaken, you were a very vocal critic of Mancini on here, particularly in his final year.

This season has a lot of similarities to that final Mancini season. Still involved in the trophy hunt but clearly performing way below par.

Genuine question - what gives you the belief that Pellegrini can still do it but Mancini couldn't?

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

We never looked like winning the league from December onwards. He had a negative outlook, we stopped looking like we would score. In the season Mancini went, by this part of the season, we were out of two cups after a truly feeble European campaign and a half arsed title defence. Having said that, we should have won the FA Cup, which would have represented a successful season. It proved to be a great decision with better football and a second title.
Pellers, whilst being more cautious than I'd like this season is essentially committed to playing attacking football.
That performance yesterday was a decent effort with some balls about it.
We are in a far better position than the corresponding period in Mancini's last term.

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

This is such an over reaction. What's wrong with us?
We are involved in the title race and probably will be for the foreseeable.
If we beat a mid table side in midweek, we'll be in our fourth cup final in six years.
We have a very winnable Chumps League draw. And another cup fixture to come as well. We've been in reasonable form and best ever striker has come alive again.
We may or may not win any or all of these competitions, but the season is just coming alive not fizzling out.

I'm just reading that post to see if I missed some sarcasm or if it was meant to be ironic.
Nope, it seems to be just a runny turd of a message..

I think you're being harsh there at the end. I can sympathize with Dameerto's feelings. It's just weird supporting a Manchester City nowadays.Sometimes, it seems to me that aA loss feels like a catastrophee, a draw feels like a loss, a narrow win like a draw and only a clear victory truly feels like a victory. Especially when you also read headlines run something along the lines of "Manchester City drop vital points in draw". The emotional perspectives get skewed is what I'm saying. Sometimes you manage to remain calm and look at the table. Sometimes you get swept away with it.

Not that harsh really. To say the season is fizzling out when we have a cup semi final and two of the top four coming to ours in the next three weeks is nonsense. And that's without taking into account the Chumps League recommenncing after that.
I have no idea how we'll do but do know this. Far from fizzling out It's just hotting up! Let's enjoy some monster games FFS

[Cocacolajojo1]

Fair enough.