Looks to me like he's scoring against Brentford.

3 hours ago, Gol15 said:

Looks to me like he's scoring against Brentford.

Perhaps, if he gets 5 chances. Question is how many will Toney score?

5 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Perhaps, if he gets 5 chances. Question is how many will Toney score?

I think in 3 shots he gets a goal but we'll see. I think we might just get lucky and they score no goals at all...

Edited October 18, 20223 yr by Gol15

1 hour ago, Gol15 said:

I think in 3 shots he gets a goal but we'll see. I think we might just get lucky and they score no goals at all...

Sterling had 3 excellent chances verses Villa and wasted them all.

we would need to be exceptionally lucky for Toney not to score. Like owing down with a heavy cold tomorrow morning kind of lucky.

Edited October 19, 20223 yr by axman2526

4 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Sterling had 3 excellent chances verses Villa and wasted them all.

we would need to be exceptionally lucky for Toney not to score. Like owing down with a heavy cold tomorrow morning kind of lucky.

I could go give him a big sloppy kiss but I fear it’s too late?

Why play a player that has scored 112 PL goals as a wingback? He does nothing out there. He's not the dynamic dribbler he used to be anymore. The only situations where he was threatening was when he abandoned his role and came inside which left us with nobody or Chukwuemeka who isn't well suited for this role providing width for us. Bad substitution.

1 minute ago, True Blue23 said:

Why play a player that has scored 112 PL goals as a wingback? He does nothing out there. He's not the dynamic dribbler he used to be anymore. The only situations where he was threatening was when he abandoned his role and came inside which left us with nobody or Chukwuemeka who isn't well suited for this role providing width for us. Bad substitution.

Potter was really poor tonight.

Just now, True Blue23 said:

Why play a player that has scored 112 PL goals as a wingback? He does nothing out there. He's not the dynamic dribbler he used to be anymore. The only situations where he was threatening was when he abandoned his role and came inside which left us with nobody or Chukwuemeka who isn't well suited for this role providing width for us. Bad substitution.

Because Potter is a wizard.  He's made the clubs biggest goal threat disappear. 

Having 112 PL goal Sterling stuck at Wingback while we've got Havertz and Pulisic up front, Kovacic and Jorginho shooting from outside the box and RLC trying to create on the other wing is one of the most shambolic team set ups I've ever seen.

5 players in attacking positions that have next to no chance of ever scoring 10 PL goals a season while one of the best goal scorers of the last decade is marooned at wingback covering for a teenager playing his first game for the club.

31 minutes ago, True Blue23 said:

Why play a player that has scored 112 PL goals as a wingback? He does nothing out there. He's not the dynamic dribbler he used to be anymore. The only situations where he was threatening was when he abandoned his role and came inside which left us with nobody or Chukwuemeka who isn't well suited for this role providing width for us. Bad substitution.

I really don't get it. We saw the best of Sterling at City, and that was combining with players on the edge of the area and ghosting in behind the defence and scoring a tap in. How Potter is using him is laughable, we may as well have not signed him at all.

Edited October 19, 20223 yr by Scott Harris

29 minutes ago, JPH said:

Potter was really poor tonight.

Yes but less than 2 weeks ago he outsmarted one of the world's finest coaches, then did it again 6 days later.

He's not a sh*t manager for tonight just like he wasn't Jose 2004 recreated after those games.

As did Avram Grant!

The way I see it is that it’s just teething problems at the moment, things will fall into gear eventually.

Sterling at wing back is an experiment and it’s clearly not working out, if Potter can get the best out of Mount he certainly can with Sterling, a proven player. I wouldn’t worry too much about it, after all it’s still early days.

 

3 minutes ago, Mod said:

As did Avram Grant!

Please do not put disrespect on his name. His master tactics got us to champions league final and took our sensational premier league title challenge to final day. If it wasn’t for his wizard team talks we never would have done it.

9 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

I really don't get it. We saw the best of Sterling at City, and that was combining with players on the edge of the area and ghosting in behind the defence and scoring a tap in. How Potter is using him is laughable, we may as well have not signed him at all.

I would be pleasantly surprised if Sterling isn't pissed off already.

Because this is tinkering on a new level. Used as a wingback against Villa and that was a disaster and too then put him at wingback again three days after, on the other side for good measure is just ridiculous.

 

 

15 hours ago, Mod said:

As did Avram Grant!

Did he? When and who?

Call up his stats if you must, I’m sure he outsmarted the best, apparently we played our best football with him so there must be something in some stats somewhere.

On 20/10/2022 at 05:00, Scott Harris said:

I really don't get it. We saw the best of Sterling at City, and that was combining with players on the edge of the area and ghosting in behind the defence and scoring a tap in. How Potter is using him is laughable, we may as well have not signed him at all.

 

This is the perfect scenario how sterling get his tap in for for City. 

How do you want us to recreate this? 

17 hours ago, Argo said:

Did he? When and who?

Jose Mourinho. Took his job from under him within a matter of months. 

Potter doesn't want Sterling, i am sure of it. He cannot seem to fit him in to the style that he is trying to develop. I am not sure what that style is at present but pretty sure Sterling is his square peg.

I know he lost a lot of momentum but at the very start, in those few matches under Potter he did well even while playing far away from the opposition box.

After 9 PL matches he has 3 goals, I personally didn't expect him to have more at this point in time and let's not forget that once the season started Tuchel never took him out of the starting lineup and then Potter kept playing him as well so maybe he'll be more fresh against Man United now.

10 hours ago, Bob stark said:

 

This is the perfect scenario how sterling get his tap in for for City. 

How do you want us to recreate this? 

We get it all wrong. What we do is have somebody like Sterling or Kovacic pick the ball up just over the half way line where they will move it on to a wing back who then just passes it 5 yards backwards because the oppositions defence is perfectly set up. We need to be smarter than that. What use is James or Chilwell when they are receiving the ball in a standing position? they need to be running onto the ball so they can put a cross across the box. The fact that we aren't doing that means the system is breaking down. This comes down to the attackers not being intelligent enough to create the space.

Mount, Kovacic, Pulisic, Sterling, Havertz, they need to be dragging defenders out of position and creating holes for the wing backs to run into. Clever movement and one touch passing around the penalty area, this is the kind of thing a defence hates because it's hard to hold your position. Moving them around will create the space for wing backs, then the ball can be fed into them like we see in the picture above with De Bruyne, that gives them the perfect opportunity to hit the ball across the box for somebody like Sterling to run onto and score a tap in.

11 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

We get it all wrong. What we do is have somebody like Sterling or Kovacic pick the ball up just over the half way line where they will move it on to a wing back who then just passes it 5 yards backwards because the oppositions defence is perfectly set up. We need to be smarter than that. What use is James or Chilwell when they are receiving the ball in a standing position? they need to be running onto the ball so they can put a cross across the box. The fact that we aren't doing that means the system is breaking down. This comes down to the attackers not being intelligent enough to create the space.

Mount, Kovacic, Pulisic, Sterling, Havertz, they need to be dragging defenders out of position and creating holes for the wing backs to run into. Clever movement and one touch passing around the penalty area, this is the kind of thing a defence hates because it's hard to hold your position. Moving them around will create the space for wing backs, then the ball can be fed into them like we see in the picture above with De Bruyne, that gives them the perfect opportunity to hit the ball across the box for somebody like Sterling to run onto and score a tap in.

Let's forget about movement for now. Let's just strip it down to very basic which is player selection. 

Can we get scenario as in that picture consistently with just two man? Probably not so let's add one more man to the right. Let say we have Mount, kova and James on that right hand side. 

Now you need two other player in the middle beside sterling. One is a cf the other has to be our lwb (only Chilwell can do this) 

So purely from player selection pov, we need Reece, Chillwell, kova to play. With Chilwell having just recovered from acl, you really can't expect much from him which mean you probably need to play sterling as LWB which is kinda what Potter has been doing. 

 

 

 

 

 

In his shoes I will be walking into the manager’s office and demanding answers. He is our highest paid player, and has earned the right to ask why he isn’t been used effectively. Stats wise he is down across the board; shots per game is down, passes completed is down. You wouldn’t sign Haaland and play him as a RW just because we don’t have one. 
Pep knew his technical limitations and hid it by playing him far up the pitch where he wasn’t expected to actively take part in the build up. This is why I questioned if he would be as effective in a 3-4-3 when we were linked because the demands are different. That was why Pep dropped the formation after trying it a few times and has never revisited it. 

2 hours ago, ducavis said:

In his shoes I will be walking into the manager’s office and demanding answers. He is our highest paid player, and has earned the right to ask why he isn’t been used effectively. Stats wise he is down across the board; shots per game is down, passes completed is down. You wouldn’t sign Haaland and play him as a RW just because we don’t have one. 
Pep knew his technical limitations and hid it by playing him far up the pitch where he wasn’t expected to actively take part in the build up. This is why I questioned if he would be as effective in a 3-4-3 when we were linked because the demands are different. That was why Pep dropped the formation after trying it a few times and has never revisited it. 

I am curious. What do you want sterling to do? Do you want him to be hazard? To be Pedro? To be willian? 

 

Edited October 22, 20223 yr by Bob stark

4 hours ago, ducavis said:

In his shoes I will be walking into the manager’s office and demanding answers. He is our highest paid player, and has earned the right to ask why he isn’t been used effectively. Stats wise he is down across the board; shots per game is down, passes completed is down. You wouldn’t sign Haaland and play him as a RW just because we don’t have one. 
Pep knew his technical limitations and hid it by playing him far up the pitch where he wasn’t expected to actively take part in the build up. This is why I questioned if he would be as effective in a 3-4-3 when we were linked because the demands are different. That was why Pep dropped the formation after trying it a few times and has never revisited it. 

To be honest if I was the manager I'd be inviting Sterling into my office and asking him the same questions. Why isn't he shooting? Why does he try to pass the ball at every attacking opportunity and end up losing the ball a lot of the time? How much time does he actually want to make a decision in the final third?

I still think he can be a top performer for us and we need to find the best way to use him, but let's not ignore how frustrating he can be when he actually does get his chances. We need to work with him to get the best out of him but he also needs to look at himself.