Gol15

Like I already pointed out, they would have looked the same or worse vs a better team that is Fulham. We didn't have much of a midfield unless you mean that it was a vital and crucial mistake to not put Casadei at some point of the match but even so it was the starter of Fulham called Lukic that made a run after Cucurella went forward and he assisted the winning goal for them, I don't buy the narrative of the previous match at all. If Nkunku and J.Felix can't do anything against Ipswich, no amount of fitness or tinkering can save them.

You can't really prove that the manager cost us all of those 3 matches. Last season after 25 matches played, meaning after 6 more matches in comparison to right now, we had the same amount of points as now after 19 matches played.

1. No evidence of that at all. 2. No evidence of that at all. You see my view is from a modern game's perspective of football management, yours is just a make-believe fantasy; Fresh players started this match but you couldn't notice it, adding also fresher subs that were brought in as well, without changing the so called dynamic of the game. The players in question would have lacked match-sharpness during the previous match too so your theory of them being able to change the harder match vs Fulham is just a delusion on your part. Feel free to feel, about it however you want but you do not have any real analysis on your side.

1. Those subs vs Fulham wouldn't have changed a thing and this match is the absolute proof of it so you're already proven wrong. 2. If these fresh players can't perform vs the worst team in the league it's literally not on the manager that gave them all the conditions to succeed.

Very close 80% possession now.

If anything those that complained about the lack of subs vs Fulham are humbled now, a different lineup with fresh legs and a much worse performance.

Cause as we have all seen, J.Felix is a really useful player.

We will end up with 80% possession so the question is if Nkunku can do anything up front.

You got your wish so tonight is his night, has to perform well.

This is the absolute chance for J.Felix to perform, he was saved for tonight so he must play well.

It shouldn't be hard to understand that it could have been a simple judgement that had been made, that the starting lineup is our best possible option till the final whistle anyway. We had in fact more chances to score and we also did score from an offside position, if anything Maresca could have tried to put in a defender and just hold for 10-15 minutes if he knew that Nkunku wouldn't be able to do what some are suggesting, that the 18 year old Guiu was the best option up front. But you can't blame Maresca for leaving Palmer to play for the full 90' as he is after all our best player that can create something out of nothing so to take Palmer for Nkunku and then Jackson for Guiu is a hindsight 20/20 thing as soon as the match ended the way it did. Looking closely at the second conceded goal, it was going to happen regardless of which winger or which striker would have been on the pitch for us and if we look at the players involved, the assist for the tap-in goal was made by a player that played from start to finish for Fulham and that pass wasn't intercepted by Enzo that was just a second too slow so how come the Fulham player is able to make that run and pass it well while our own player couldn't follow it through? Obviously sometimes bad things just happen, when we won vs Spuds away most subs were made in the late second half and we still conceded a 3rd goal so it's no guarantee that a gameplan will work even if the subs are made. Things could have been done differently but it's just how it is, let's not blame the manager for a loss when he's doing great work to make a team out of a very young set of players.

Guiu and Acheampong are both 18 year old. What's the point of thinking that more subs would have changed the outcome of the match if the senior players couldn't do it? Our first and only sub was used after min 70' and after min 80' we conceded the first goal so basically Nkunku didn't do anything, the sub that was used wasn't even an academy player and it didn't impact the match in any way, in fact you could argue that it affected us negatively.

All this talk about subs yet nobody can actually say who should have been subbed on. Empty talk, we had very limited options on the bench.

Only after the battle everyone wants to be the general. Just because we didn't make 5 subs it doesn't mean that no instructions were given during the match, it was a hard match and making subs for the sake of optics isn't really a good move, the players selected had to do better. I wouldn't have taken off Palmer for J.Felix either, nor would I have put in Casadei for Enzo or Disasi for Colwill, if that's what you're suggesting it's still no guarantee that our gameplan could have been significantly more different than how it actually was. I'm not worried, Maresca is doing a good job to make the squad more consistent.

If the best possible team was playing then there is no real argument about not using as many subs as possible, it's not like the more you sub the better. I wish that it was that simple, you take out Enzo and put in Casadei and you win the match because of it, would be great.

This is a weak attempt to make it sound as if Maresca is not using the squad properly or something... You would think that Maresca isn't giving minutes to some players but if you look at the total minutes played in all competitions Nkunku has over 1000 minutes played so he and Mudryk are either the same or better than Sancho and while Felix does have less minutes played in comparison to the others in his position he actually has more minutes played in total than Lavia for example and Disasi has been playing just basically just one half of play less than Tosin so this argument fails. It's funny how nobody complained about these things while Conte was winning the league the last time we've won it as he used the same players to do so, same thing with Tuchel using a smaller amount of players for our last CL run, looks like those narratives about how the manager uses the squad only come in play when the results are less than impressive. Can you find me a Liverpool fan or an Arse' fan that is complaining about how their manager has had several players this season that have been playing for more than 2000 minutes already? Because both of those squads have several players with those minutes while we have none! Last season at this point in time we had a +1 goal difference and we were 11th, now with Maresca we are 3rd and have a +17 goal difference. I think you should lighten up a bit...

There is no certainty that either of those would have made any difference. Fulham's gameplan opened us up and Colwill/Adarabi looked totally lost. Fulham was fine with a draw but had no intention of stopping us from making our own misjudgments. Palmer scored a great goal but didn't really take over the match and while we could have scored more goals it was never really going to be a routine win, the players probably had all been thinking about the holidays, make no mistake this is the best we've got. Clearly it was a hard match for us and I can't see anyone from the bench making a real difference.

I can't pretend I didn't see Nkunku as the real replacement of Hazard (after Pulisic turned out to be a bit weak), feels almost mind-blowing that he couldn't set the tone for the whole team but I agree that all space and trust should be given to Palmer. Why Nkunku couldn't adapt and play as the inside-forward on any side? Hope Maresca and the staff tried their best to make it work, Nkunku looked perfect for the PL on paper.

Man City without Rodri is like if we hadn't bought Enzo after Jorginho was sold, they have nobody there as Kovacic was never that kind of a player. As much as Jackson has flaws, Haaland looks more limited and it goes to show just how much he depends on 4 players putting on a shift every match in order for him to have a tap-in.

Man City has been taking so many classes lately, you can tell by his expression that Håland missed a lot of school during his youth years...

Man City rebuilding is going for 30 year olds Kovacic and Gundogan. We got a better future, their era is over.

If Maresca gave up on KDH already it would be a big surprise. But I hope if all that is true that Andrey Santos gets his chance.

The face of the league.