UEFA Champions League 2019/20

[DavidMarrio]

I honestly don't get how he missed and the more I watch it I can't get my head around it. 

Proper funny though. Makes it better it's him as well.

[METALMAN]

1 minute ago, DavidMarrio said:

Proper funny though. Makes it better it's him as well.

That's not very gracious : /

[DavidMarrio]

Just now, metalman said:

That's not very gracious : /

🤷‍♂️

[The Lusophone]

Three quarters of a billion spent and can't get past the quarter finals.

[Arjen Robben]

Feel kinda bad for Sterling really, he was really good tonight, great play to set up de Bruyne, then again to put it on a plate for Gabriel Jesus just before Lyon got their second, then that miss before the third. Poor bastard.

[TCO]

1 hour ago, MadJack said:

Three quarters of a billion spent and can't get past the quarter finals.

Man United fans slagging Man City for their spending:

[METALMAN]

Quite.

[The Lusophone]

17 minutes ago, TCO said:

Man United fans slagging Man City for their spending:

Bit different though innit.

[Tigerstyle]

1 hour ago, MadJack said:

Bit different though innit.

Yeah, Man Utd USED to spend mad money and USED to be good and USED to have a top tier manager. Where Man City are all those now.

[The Lusophone]

30 minutes ago, Tigerstyle said:

Yeah, Man Utd USED to spend mad money and USED to be good and USED to have a top tier manager. Where Man City are all those now.

I mean that "top tier manager" has spent more than any other manager in history for... *checks notes* no further progress in the Champions League than David Moyes achieved in his sole season at Old Trafford.

The guy Man City hired to win the Champions League, can't win the Champions League. Some might say he wasn't doing very good at his job.

[Benjamin]

At least the money Man Utd uses isn’t blood money.

[TCO]

The whole our money is cleaner than yours debate is laughable. Man United were lucky enough to be on top and have the greatest manager ever when Sky created football in 1992 so now they have the right to be wealthy. Any club that gets investment after the FFP rules were implemented to desperately keep the status quo, is looked down upon. 

Any achievement they make is lessened because of the money they spent and any shortcoming they have is mocked for the same reason. The whole thing is tiresome.

The entire game is a billionaires playground and ran with money and for money from the top to bottom.

[Bobfoc]

I remember a lot of United fans, many of whom only supported them because they were the best team when they started watching football, getting on their high horse when Blackburn, Newcastle and Chelsea started spending large amounts of money to be more competitive at the top end of the league. I get the feeling that many of them would be just as indignant about City's spending regardless of where the money came from.

I'm not getting at all United fans here. I'm all for letting people support whichever team they like. However, I find that the moral high ground is something of a slippery slope in football.

[DavidMarrio]

The thing I don't get about Pep with City in the Champions League is he literally changes a working formula and over thinks the situation and starts trying to do all these tactical changes and it literally ends up blowing up in their face. 

Like Lyon must have thought when they saw that line up, they're paying us a lot of respect. Literally all the creative players were on the bench! 

This format was perfect chance for City in one off games to just try and steam roll through people and instead just wilted out once more? 

You must admit though like really if you're going purely black and white all he has achieved more so than Mancini and Pellegrini is win one more title and a handful of league cups. He's made a bigger impact but in the grand scheme of things when people previously went on about Poch and Klopp not having won anything you could use a similar argument with Pep with Pellegrini and Mancini but at least Pellegrini got to a European semi.

[Adam]

There's an argument for Pep's team being one of the best ever in the Premier League from 2017 to 2019 to be fair, which I'm not sure you can say about previous City sides. Obviously the European failures are the one blemish but Guardiola created a team as dominant as anything we've seen in English football.

[gunnar hendershow]

I'd say the biggest problem with City under Pep had absolutely been how Pep, for some reason, manages to his opponents in the Champions League. It's like he goes "hm they've struggled against this formation and tactic so we'll do that even though it's not our strongest." It's like if when he was at Barcelona he saw his opponents did well against teams that focused the ball on possession in the midfield and he took Iniesta and Xavi out of the starting XI.

[TCO]

Going with Laporte, Garcia and Fernandinho in a back 3 last night was a very strange move. He seems to overthink things when it comes to the Champions League at times alright. I don't know why he didn't go with the same set up that he used against Real Madrid. 

[Baddar]

Jose had the same issue at United. It cost us a CL tie against Sevilla, who at the time, were mid table and on a terrible run of form. He then set us up ridiculously negatively, dropping Pogba, Rashford and Martial, and we went out.

City would have pissed it last night if they played the game on their terms.

[DavidMarrio]

2 minutes ago, Baddar said:

Jose had the same issue at United. It cost us a CL tie against Sevilla, who at the time, were mid table and on a terrible run of form. He then set us up ridiculously negatively, dropping Pogba, Rashford and Martial, and we went out.

City would have pissed it last night if they played the game on their terms.

That's pretty much it and the single leg format gave them possibly their best chance of winning it and they've blown it. 

1 hour ago, Adam said:

There's an argument for Pep's team being one of the best ever in the Premier League from 2017 to 2019 to be fair, which I'm not sure you can say about previous City sides. Obviously the European failures are the one blemish but Guardiola created a team as dominant as anything we've seen in English football.

Then they came up against Jürgen Klopp's mighty reds

[Baddar]

It's the other comp obviously, but it's why I hope Ole doesn't overthink it tonight. Play the system and the team that has put us on this run, and we'll be too much for Sevilla.

A back 5 with a slow, careful approach will probably lead to us getting beat.